


Echoes

by Shigure_Natsu



Category: Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (Because I have GREAT friends), (Honestly this is getting too long. They do the do. Explicitely. You guys get it.), (Sort of) Vet!Bucky, (With handjobs & blowjobs & rimming & everything), Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Atlantis: The Lost Empire Fusion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Atlantean creatures, Atlantean!Bucky, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bottom Steve Rogers, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America!Steve, Falling In Love, Fanart, First Time, Getting to Know Each Other, Hydra (Marvel), Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mentions of PTSD, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Smut, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Sam Wilson friendship, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Top Bucky Barnes, Top Steve Rogers, also!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 10:41:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 67,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22848844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shigure_Natsu/pseuds/Shigure_Natsu
Summary: As a child, Steve never thought of Atlantis as more than a legend. A beautiful fairytale.So when, nearly a century later, he gets sent on a mission to investigate its very existence, he doesn't expect to find it is real. Or... quite so alive.He especially doesn't expect the fierce Atlantean that captures his heart, or the trouble that his discovery will stir up, both on the surface and in Atlantis.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 123
Kudos: 156





	1. Worlds Apart

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost, this work wouldn't have exsited without [Nel](https://twitter.com/NelTheWarlock). She was the one who first came up with the concept for this fic, which we've been talking about for more than a year now. I'm so thankful to her for the concept art that inspired my words, and for her cheering me on this project! Thank you Nel, you're amazing <3
> 
> I also have to thank [Loeily](https://twitter.com/LoeilyArt) for their expertise on Atlantean language. Any translations you see in this work are theirs, and I really don't have the words to express my gratitude!
> 
> Exploring Atlantis and its world has been a dream of mine since I first watched the movie as a kid, and I'm glad I could do exactly this, and still throw in two of my favorite idiots in as well! I hope you all have as much fun reading this as I had writing it ~
> 
> (Unbeta'd fic. Any errors still in here are my own, please don't hesitate to point them out nicely if you find anything!)

The first time Steve hears about Atlantis, he’s six, and his mother is lulling him back to sleep with a story only her could ever spin. It’s a tale amongst others, a legend he grabs onto for the night, chases in his dreams, but when he wakes up in the morning to the sad Brooklyn skies, it seems very far away already.

The second time he hears about Atlantis, his mom has been dead for decades, he’s gained a hundred and fifty pounds as well as twenty inches, he’s been iced and brought back, and it’s 2015. Now the world calls him _Captain America_.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Bruce says, hand going through his hair in a frenzy, shaking his head.

Steve leans against the counter, and waits him out. He’s learned to do that with Banner. His thoughts always tend to sort themselves out in the end.

“I couldn’t believe it either, when we found the archives. Like, we all know the story, you know? The great flood, the sinking.” Bruce is going over papers, shifting them back and forth without reading them. Steve can see the outlines of a language he doesn’t know, drawings jotted down beside it. There are pictures of some kind of leather book, and of people in the 1910s, though it’s cut in a weird place, obscuring the faces of two of them. “But like, SHIELD has been looking into it, you know?” He looks up at Steve, expectant, but he doesn’t seem to get the reaction he’s waiting for, because he goes back to the files strewn around his desk and shuffles them again. This time, though, he stops on a particular stack of papers. “And they found this. Reports from 1914. Found them in a manor that used to belong to a man named Preston Whitmore. He’s been dead a while, no children to inherit any of his stuff. Most of it is gibberish, but it does mention the Thatch family a few times. Including a certain Milo Thatch. Who was not heard from again after this year.”

Steve shrugs. “He could have died in a ditch, Bruce.” As he says it, though, the words don’t quite ring true.

“That’s what I thought as well. But the old Whitmore didn’t just leave papers behind. He also left us this.”

Curiosity picked, Steve leans forward to see what’s inside the box Bruce is holding. The top of it falls away, and at first the glow is too much to make sense of what it hides. But Steve’s super soldier eyes adjust fast. He blinks. The crystal is a beautiful shade of turquoise, its light faint now that it’s under the scrutiny of the lab’s white glow. It seems to pulse with something. If he believed in any of it, Steve would call it magic. But he has seen enough miracles happen to know magic is just science peoples’ brains can’t make sense of.

“What is it?” he asks.

Bruce looks at the pendant with his head cocked, his lips sealed. “I don’t know. No one knows. I’ve run tests, hundreds of them since they brought it to me. I can’t make anything out of it. I just know it has a very high energy.” A pause. “I’ve been too scared to tinker with it, I don’t want to make the whole place explode,” he admits, sheepish.

Only half listening, Steve throws another glance at the stone. It looks a bit like the serum. The thought sends tremors through him, and he shakes it away quickly, his gaze swallowed by the turquoise intensity of the crystal.

He doesn’t realize he’s reaching toward it until Bruce catches his hand, eyebrow raised. “Not a smart thing to do, Rogers.”

Steve takes his hand back, fast, and throws his friend and colleague a shaken smile. “Sorry.” He clears his throat. “So why am I here?” The question has been running around his head since Bruce started his speech about Atlantis. He must admit he’s intrigued, but that still doesn’t explain what Banner needs with him.

“We might have found it?”

“Atlantis?” Steve’s disbelief can probably be heard in his voice, but Bruce doesn’t seem to care.

“What else? I told you, SHIELD has been looking into it. We found traces, in the reports, of a book. Something about a shepherd. Nat spent weeks decoding the entries we had, and then we ran those information through our data bases. It only leaves one place to investigate.”

“Nat? She’s in on this as well?”

Bruce nods. “Was surprisingly excited when I talked to her about it, actually. A new language for her to learn, of course she was.” He shakes his head. “But that’s not the point.”

“And the point is?”

“The point is…” Bruce continues, his finger raised for emphasis, “that we need a team to investigate. To know if those reports are true. If Whitmore and that Thatch guy truly found the Atlantis, and if so, what they found there.”

“You need me on the team.”

“SHIELD needs you on the team. True, I’m the main coordinator of the whole expedition, and maybe I personally recommended you, but still. They think it’d be good for you. A change of atmosphere, getting away from the busy life of the twenty-first century.” Bruce sighs. “Also, there’s no one I’d trust more with this mission than you. I don’t know what we’ll find there. Ruins? Most probably. But I don’t want SHIELD agents going in there and pillaging a world heritage. So I need you to be my eyes on site.”

Steve settles against the counter once again, arms crossed. Bruce isn’t wrong. America has felt stuffy for the past couple of months – years – since he was de-iced. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s the cameras on him at all times, SHIELD monitoring his every movement, his every word. Maybe he’s just a man out of time. A mission, away from the public, might be exactly what he needs.

He turns, plants his hands on the desk, and looks at Bruce straight in the eye, “Who else is on the team?”.

Bruce smiles. “Nat, obviously. She’d have my head if I said no to her. And whoever else you see fit. This isn’t a full expedition. Not yet. I just want you to scout the area, find what you must. If there is still anything to be found.”

“Small team, then?” Steve smiles, happily surprised. Not that he isn’t a team player. But he knows who he likes to have near, who he trusts. He knows who he wants beside him through hard times. And he doesn’t really like to expand that circle.

A nod. “Small team.”

“Then I’ll only need one more man with us.”

*

It takes weeks before they’re ready to go. Weeks, because Bruce still has to go through everything with the big man upstairs – and Fury is a busy man –, get the funding, the equipment, before he can settle on a launch date. This gives Steve enough time to warn the third member of his party about the mission ahead, and ample time after that for them all to brush up on anything regarding Atlantis. Two weeks is enough for Nat to be fluent in the language. It takes only one for Steve to develop an eerie fascination for the land he’s set to discover.

He’s only caught glimpses through the writings of Whitmore. Not much to go about, really. Still, enough to make his brain imagine all sorts of scenarios.

The crystal, especially, draws his attention. Bruce leaves it with him on the eve of the launch, and Steve spends the night turning in his sheets, flashes of memories that aren’t his own mixing with scenes from his past. Intermingling. He wakes multiple times, startled, and every time he walks to the small wooden box, hand hovering. He never opens it. No matter how much he wants to.

The morning of the launch, he feels tired to his very bones, and yet ready to burst out of his own skin. There’s a quinjet waiting for him, laden with cargo, and beside it, Fury, standing with his hands behind his back, and Banner, a broad smile on his lips.

“Captain,” Fury greets him, offering his hand.

Steve takes it. Shakes it. “Sir.”

“Hope you’re all set, because we aren’t sending anyone with you down there if things go awry, Cap.” The man says it with a grin, but Steve knows he means it. They’re on their own for this one. Unless there’s anything SHIELD can gain from it, Fury won’t move even a finger to get them out of any mess they might get themselves into.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

And they will. Steve knows it.

Bruce shakes him from his thoughts with a hand on his shoulder. “Everything you might need is in there. Vehicles, tech, food, … And I’ve given each of you an earpiece linked to a secure line that leads straight to me and Fury.” He puts a small object in Steve’s palm as he says it, and Steve plugs it in his ear without even looking at it in a practiced gesture.

“Are you sure we’ll be able to get to you from all the way down there?” he asks, an afterthought.

“Only one way to find out, right?” Bruce’s smile is half exhilaration, half nerves, and Steve feels his brow furrow. But before he can ask what has the scientist worried, he hears someone, hailing him from the inside of the quinjet.

“Rogers! I know you’re an elderly citizen, but do you plan to move your ass up there any time this century or should we wait for another icing cycle?”

Steve smiles. “It depends, Romanoff. Do you plan to boss me around the whole journey, or can I expect for you to shut up long enough so that I can rest my wary old bones?”

Nat laughs, and another voice joins in. “Don’t worry, Cap, I’ll make sure she behaves.”

Sam pokes his head out of the plane just as Steve hears Nat grumble something that resembles a “Not likely.” He waves, and Steve jogs up to the ramp, with a last goodbye and salute to Fury and Banner.

“I’m so glad you said yes,” Steve confesses when he reaches Sam, a weight lifting off his shoulders when his friend chuckles.

“And miss you getting in all kinds of trouble? Like hell I would.”

Steve kind of wants to punch him and hug him at the same time.

“Also, he had a new set of wings specifically designed for the trip, so I’m pretty sure he’s actually the one that’s thankful,” Nat adds from her seat at the controlling panel, a smile tugging at her lips and eyes sparkling with mirth.

Sam opens his mouth like he wants to tell her off. Stops. Smacks his lips. “Fair point.”

“Sometimes I wonder what I’d do without you guys,” Steve laughs, pulling himself until he’s sat beside Nat, looking out the windshield as the garage door opens, ever so slowly.

“You’d live an incredibly dull old man’s life in a cottage with a dog, probably,” Nat answers.

“And a white picket fence,” Sam adds.

“Don’t YOU have a white picket fence, though?” Steve retorts, and Sam shrugs, and laughs.

Silence settles in the cockpit, the three of them looking at each other, soaking in the buzz of excitement that always comes with a new mission. And then the garage door is fully opened, the blue sky stretching for miles ahead, and Nat turns to him, serious again.

“So, where to, Captain?”

“Atlantis, apparently.”

*

The quinjet soon gets replaced with a submarine, a forty feet long thing that’d be far too big for them if it didn’t have to house the weird Jeep hybrid SHIELD saddled them with for the remainder of the road.

Water overwhelms them in no time. They’re falling, deeper and deeper, and even though there’s no ice this time, Steve can feel his pulse quicken. There’s something about drowning that scares him far more than any other death he could think about. He doesn’t know what it is, exactly. He doesn’t really want to find out anyway.

His earpiece crackles, and Bruce’s voice comes on, distorted with the distance, and the miles of water already between them and the surface. “Everything okay so far?”

Steve taps the com link, but Nat answers before he can. “Everything perfect. How long did you say we’d be underwater for?” she asks, eyeing Steve warily. Can she feel how uneasy the ocean makes him? He wouldn’t be surprised.

“I’m not sure. We tried to locate the exact position of the crevasse you’ll have to go through, but there was weird interference. Probably just a few more minutes.”

Movement, at the edge of his vision. They all fall silent. They haven’t reached the bottom of the ocean yet, but they’re already a good way down, too much for whales to be hanging around. Nat cuts the lights. Turns on the radar. It buzzes, seems to ping something, and then just blurs, static all over its screen.

Sam winces. “That can’t be good.”

“You guys alright?” Bruce asks again, and this time Steve finally gets his chance to reply.

“Seems like those weird interferences extend even down there. We can’t get the radar to work,” he explains, as Sam tinkers with it without much success. “We’re flying in blind.”

“More like swimming in blind,” Sam growls, glaring at the radar that still won’t cooperate.

“I can’t pick up anything from up here either,” Bruce mutters. “I’m sure it’s noth…”

Before Steve can hear the end of his sentence, a screech resonates through the water around them.

“What the…” Nat switches the lights back on. They flicker to life. And focus right on the glowing eyes of a giant sea creature. “Fuck!” She moves the submarine only a second before one of the creature’s giant pincers strikes them. Another scream echoes, and the monster turns its flaming eyes to their submarine, which suddenly feels very, very small.

Sam is playing with the controls for the missiles, eyes going from his panel to the creature in front of them. “The heck is this thing?!”

“I don’t know,” Steve grits, holding onto his seat, never leaving the monster out of his sight as it circles back to them for another attack, “but it doesn’t seem very friendly.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” And then Sam launches his first strike.

The missile explodes against the creature, right into its face. The water around them vibrates with the detonation, and with the metallic groan of the monster, and yet a second later, it appears through the cloud of smoke, unscathed.

“Uh oh…” Sam sing-songs, panic in his voice as the thing charges right toward them.

This time, Nat doesn’t manage to evade the strike. It sends the submarine sprawling, colliding with a stone wall, shaking them all the way down to their bones. Thankfully, it holds. The metal might be a bit dented, though.

“I suggest we get the hell out of here,” Nat says, through her locked jaw, hands on the steering wheel trying to right their submarine and put it back on its course.

“Wise suggestion. Let’s go.”

They propel forward. Nat is pushing the machine as fast as it’ll go, and yet the sound of the monster still haunts them, an echo never straying far away. Steve shivers. When he looks at one of the cameras, he can make out the giant shape, right on their tail, a threat barely hidden by the troubled water.

“We need a distraction.”

Sam huffs, and points to his control panel. “Well, be my guest, because it seems like missiles don’t even move this guy, and Fury didn’t really give us anything stronger than that.”

With an uneasy smile on his lips, Steve turns to the back of the cockpit. He opens one of the trunks, gets a diving outfit out, and starts putting it on with the practiced gestures of a soldier accustomed to a uniform. All the while, only static fills his brain. He can’t think about what he’s about to do. He doesn’t want to.

Gaping at him, Sam asks, “You don’t really mean to go out there and FIGHT that thing, do you?”

“Well, if you have a better suggestion, now would be the time,” Steve retorts. He tries to appear unbothered. He probably fails. And yet, it’s not the giant sea monster looming over them that scares him. It’s the mere thought of the water crushing him in its claws, and never letting go. Just like the ice had.

“Steve, that’s SUICIDE. This thing is like… a whole mile long, and deadly. What are you gonna do, wrestle it into submission?” A pause, and then Sam keeps on. “And before you even have to face that, the damn pressure down there will obliterate you! Don’t be stupid.”

Sam is bewildered. Nat, though… Nat is looking at him like she knows exactly what’s going through his head. Like she wants to stop him, but knows she can’t.

“He’s right, Steve.”

His hands are shaking. But the suit is on. “I have to try.”

And with that, he goes to the back of the submarine, to the latch in the floor and the airlock underneath. He opens it. And he dives.

He expects cold to hit him, or to be pushed around by the motions of the currents. But all around him seems eerily calm. Until he notices the rumble of the submarine, stopped right behind him, and the deadly melody of the beast, going straight for him.

Steve has never felt more vulnerable in his life. Not when he was a kid getting beaten up in Brooklyn, not when he was being pushed around his first weeks in the army, not even when he woke up in a different century to a weird place and weird people. But here, in the middle of the water, with his friends at his back and that giant thing coming for him, no amount of serum seems enough to make him feel powerful.

He takes his knife out – he left his shield in the submarine, useless underwater – and raises it. Fury would probably laugh at him if he could seem him right now. Captain America, great hero of the WWII, one of SHIELD’s greatest assets, facing down a mighty ocean beast with only a knife and the certainty that he’ll die in this godforsaken place and leave nothing that matters behind.

But the creature is on him, then, and he has to think fast. He spins, avoiding the deadly jaws, catching a glimpse of its red shot eyes. With a twist of his wrist, he plants the tip of his knife into the monster’s hide. Or at least tries to. The weapon hisses, sparks flying, and skitters off the surface of the creature, leaving only a faded white line on the gray skin.

“Metal,” Steve thinks. The creature isn’t a beast. It’s a _machine_. And, judging by the designs written all over its surface, and the clear memories he has of Bruce’s files and Nat’s lessons, it’s an Atlantean one.

The time it takes for him to piece all this together is long, too long perhaps, enough for the machine to pass him, for it to use its tail to smack into Steve and push him twenty feet away like he weighs nothing. He recoils, the blow a sharp pain in his stomach. He’s lost his knife.

But the beast isn’t done. It wants to toy with him a little longer. That’s why on its next attack, it seems to miss Steve entirely. At least that’s what he thinks, until the very edge of its pincer slashes into Steve’s suit, right against his leg. It doesn’t even graze his skin. And yet it’s enough for the salty, cold water of the ocean to break through and submerge him.

For a second, Steve sees only blackness. Then he remembers where he is, what is happening, and he takes one last gulp of air before he’s entirely drowned. He removes his helmet. It doesn’t do much for him anymore, except obscure his view, and he needs all his senses if he wants to reach the submarine back in one piece, and in time before the machine strikes again.

He’s about to take his first lap toward his friends, toward safety, when a small white dot catches the corner of his eye. Unconsciously, his hand goes where the gash in his suit is. Where the pocket of his pants used to be.

The choice really isn’t one. Steve is a super soldier, and he knows he can handle a few minutes down there before the lack of air makes him woozy. Sure, there is the problem of the huge Atlantean beast that wants to kill him. But he forgets about it as soon as he realizes the thing slowly making its way downward is the pendant he’s been keeping close to him for the past day.

He swims with new vigor, with the desperation of a man knowing it’s his last chance. He doesn’t know why, doesn’t understand his fascination with the crystal himself. But since he first laid eyes on the glowing stone, he hasn’t been able to keep it out of his mind. He can’t lose it. Not even if it means he’ll be ripped to pieces by a strange machine.

The beast is getting closer. He doesn’t see it, but he can tell from the sounds, the weird clicks its metallic hide emits, the cricking of its hinges and its jaw slowly opening to engulf Steve whole. But the box is only a few feet away now. It collides with a rock, ricochets, and the force of the shock opens it, revealing the pale turquoise glow of the crystal, floating away from its casing.

His muscles strain, his whole body taut with the effort, with the air slowly leaving his lunges. There. Steve catches it. For a moment, he forgets about Bruce’s warning. The crystal doesn’t do anything to him, anyway. Doesn’t hurt him. If anything, there’s a warmness to it, a soft, soothing touch.

When he turns, the crystal encased in his hand, and his whole body aching under the pressure of the ocean and the lack of air in his lung, he’s suddenly faced with the machine’s dilated pupil. He stares at the glowing eye, the red mechanism seemingly examining him. The beast doesn’t lurch. Doesn’t move, but for this great eye. It ends up focusing on the crystal in his hand. And then the creature emits another series of clicks, far less threatening than its previous screams. The pupil contracts, and Steve braces for an attack.

It never comes. Instead, the machine withdraws, takes one last look at him, at the submarine he hasn’t strayed too far from and turns, disappearing as fast as it had attacked.

Steve stays staring at the abyss until the pressure on his lungs becomes too much to bear, and then he swims back to the submarine, to the open arms of his friends and their worried but curious gazes.

“What happened out there?” Nat asks, helping him out of his drenched suit, as Sam checks him for any damage.

Steve shakes his head, sends drops of water falling everywhere. “I’m not sure.”

The crystal is still in his hand. It glows faintly, its presence reassuring somehow. Without thinking, Steve puts it around his neck. It settles between his collarbones. Nothing has felt as right as this in a while.

Sam glances at the stone, eyebrows raised. Again, Steve shrugs. It’s not like he has an explanation anyway. But he can’t help thinking the crystal somehow saved his life, and now he feels a bit reluctant putting it back into a box. His friends don’t say anything. They go back to the cockpit, leaving him privacy to change into dry clothes, and regain his footing. He realizes, then, that his body is still shaking from the aftermaths of his dive. Steve clenches his fist. The shaking stops.

They find the crevasse without much trouble after that. It’s a bit gap, really, a zigzag that opens up for miles against the ocean’s floor, calling out to them. They dive in with the lights on this time, lying in wait for another part of the Atlantean’s welcoming committee.

Nothing happens. Not as they reach the surface, emerging into a cave dimly lit by the submarine’s lights, not as they exit it with the Jeep filled to bursting with equipment, and not as they start the car, heading the only way they can: forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> Updates are planned to happen once per day if my life permits it ;)


	2. Friend or foe?

The journey is long and uneventful, for the most part. They get stuck on which way to go a few times, have to backtrack, ask Bruce for directions through a weakening com link. Days pass, and Steve would start to get bored if, with each new cave, the scenery didn’t change. Sometimes they’re dark, lonely giant things, with only the sound of water drops and of their vehicle echoing through the chamber, and sometimes they’re lit up, statues and inscriptions stretching all around them, and they have to stop to admire It for a while, soak in the prowess of the Atlantean culture.

The closer they get to their goal, the warmer the stone against Steve’s skin feels. It buzzes with a new energy, seems to come even more alive with each mile they tread. Belatedly, Steve holds it in his hand. He’s been looking at it every which way for days now, but the stone has yet to reveal its secrets. He doesn’t mind, though. He likes just imagining what it can do, and what kind of magic it holds. Likes to think of it, if anything, as a protection against any harm to come.

They sit by the campfire that night, trading food and stories as they’ve done all the nights before. At least it’s supposed to be night, but in those caves hidden permanently from the sun, they only have their watches to know which part of the day it is.

Nat is on her phone, a notebook precariously balanced on her right knee, pen in hand, trying to decipher some of the inscriptions they passed earlier, grumbling as she does. “Most of them are faded away. How am I supposed to know if this says “glory” or a foul meaning word?” She’s tapping her pen on the paper now, eyes focusing on the phone picture as if it’ll suddenly make the markings more legible.

Sam laughs a bit, and then points to a wall, ten feet from where they’re parked for the night. “I’m pretty sure I saw some more glyphs on the walls as we passed them by earlier, if you want to get even more frustrated.”

She glares at him only for a second, enough for Sam to shut up, and then she’s up, and moving in the direction he pointed in. On instinct, Steve follows, taking a torch with him. Sam sticks close to his footsteps as well, as if losing sight of his friends means getting lost in this place forever. Eternal damnation.

There are glyphs on the walls indeed. They aren’t as intricate as the ones they’ve passed thus far. If anything, they resemble graffiti and others tags on the walls of New York more than they do the ethereal inscriptions. As Nat takes his torch, and starts translating, Steve knows he’s right.

“Shu… Shuri was here,” she reads. “And T’challa is a sore loser.”

“This sounds like third graders,” Sam comments with a snicker.

“Maybe they were…” Steve murmurs, his hand tracing the round patterns of the letters, as the crystal against his chest shines progressively brighter and brighter.

He feels it before he hears it. A discrepancy in the wind. A shift in the atmosphere. And then the sound, so soft only he could ever hear it, of feet on the ground.

He turns, but it’s too late already.

A knife at his throat. Steve backtracks, again and again and again until he’s flush against the stone, hands raised. From the corner of his eyes, he can see Nat and Sam drawing their weapons. He shakes his head, and the movement drives the blade deeper, enough to breach the tender skin there. He can feel the blood trickle down. But by then he’s too focused on the eyes looking back at him to mind.

They’re ice blue. Piercing. Nearly just as cold as the metal pressing against his skin, which he realizes extends lower than just the weapon itself, covering the entire left arm of the warrior that has Steve pinned back. But he doesn’t have time to weigh on it more. He’s pressed against a wall, a weapon at his throat, hands raised in an attempt to placate the man, and his friends about three seconds away from starting an all-out battle with the stranger.

Art by [Nel](https://twitter.com/NelTheWarlock)

« Leb ese-en dup? »

The words ring strange in Steve’s brain. He’s heard the same language out of Nat’s voice as she practiced, but this man’s accent is more lilting. Melodic, almost, like waves crashing on a shore.

Nat articulates a response, words Steve can’t comprehend, too focused on the warrior before him, the idea of him being an actual Atlantean so foreign his brain can’t quite compute, can’t seem to work anymore. And yet there is a tattoo on the man’s face, a rounded thing painted across his eye, bluer than his pupil, and around his neck there’s a crystal, the very same stone hidden under Steve’s shirt.

Whatever Nat’s answer was, it doesn’t seem to satisfy the man. He keeps his knife on Steve’s neck, taut brows giving his rounded face a severe appearance.

Steve raises his hand, slowly. The man’s eyes instantly go to it, and he presses closer still. Steve has to hold back a wince, the edge of the weapon cutting through him a disagreeable sensation. He lets the man follow his hand, and plunges it in his neckline, ignoring the tensing of the warrior, and drawing his crystal back from its hiding place as non-threateningly as he can.

“We’re friends,” he tells the man, and hopes that, whether he can understand his words or not, he’ll at least recognize the pendant for what it is: a peace gesture.

The knife drops a bit, and immediately, the man’s free hand – the metallic one – encases the crystal, turning it around with mistrust and curiosity alternating in his gaze.

“Where did you find this?” His English is near perfect. Steve doesn’t expect it, and it takes him a while before he can answer.

“An old manor,” he goes for honest, unsure about who this man is, what he wants, or what kind of answer will mean he won’t cut them down to pieces. “In the belongings of a man named Preston Whitmore.”

The stranger’s eyes widen for only a second, and then he’s taking another step toward Steve, so close they’re nearly skin to skin. “Did you steal it?” he asks, venom in his voice.

Steve shakes his head, hands raised again, trying to not get distracted by the body against his. “Whitmore died a few years back. My team collected his belongings, and discovered the pendant while searching through it.”

Surprise. The man takes a step back this time, stunned, but he never lets go of Steve’s pendant. “Whitmore is dead?”

Steve nods. This time the warrior draws back even more, finally drops the crystal against Steve’s chest. He’s talking to himself in Atlantean again, but Steve thinks he can recognize the word “Milo” in whatever he’s saying.

And then Sam moves, and the spell is broken. The warrior has his weapon raised again, and he eyes each of them in turn, his gaze landing on Steve at last. “You three, you’re coming with me.” He pulls a cord out of the bag at his side, and holds it.

Working purely on instinct, Steve pushes his hands forward, wrists against each other and ready to be tied up. Nat and Sam follow, no matter how wary they look. It’s only a matter of seconds before the stranger has all three of them tied up, and walking further into the cave.

“Where are you taking us?” Sam’s question goes without an answer, as they make their way on a small path, passing their vehicle – in which Steve’s shield is hidden, among other things. He quickly crushes the pang of guilt he feels at leaving it behind.

As the warrior leads them away from their camp, and further along the road, Steve turns to his friends. Nat is signing angrily at Sam, Sam is signing angrily back. It seems she wants to try and escape, maybe knock the warrior out, but Sam is arguing about the fact that, if this man IS indeed and Atlantean, it might not be the smartest course of action to anger him.

Steve waits until they both look at him before he signs a definitive “No” to Nat, and tells them they’ll wait to see where he leads them.

A growl, from further down the path. Steve turns back just in time to see the silhouette of a beast walking up to the warrior. It head-butts him, a there and gone gesture, and then it’s turning to the three of them, posturing, its weird teeth threatening to tear them apart if they so much as move.

The warrior clicks his tongue, gives a quick order, and like that the beast stops, sitting back on its haunches with its head to the side like it doesn’t quite understand what its master wants. Steve is dumbfounded. The creature acts like a dog, but it’s anything but one. In the meager light of their torch, its skin appears ashen gray and leathery, its many bulbous eyes unseeing, its numerous fangs deadly weapons. This isn’t from Earth. It cannot be.

“Come on, let’s go,” the warrior says, eyeing them and the beast in turn. With a smile, he tells Steve, the closest one from the creature, “He usually doesn’t bite strangers. Usually.”

Steve is surprised by the mischievous tone. There’s still wariness there, sure enough, but it’s as if the man doesn’t really see them as a threat. Is he a fool, or just so sure in his ability to stop them if they decide to try anything that he doesn’t care? It doesn’t really matter, anyway. They came here to find the Atlantis, find out what HAPPENED to it, and it seems like the stranger is leading them straight toward their goal.

They seem to walk for miles. Steve can’t really tell, in the dark, distracted by the idea that he’s staring at a man from a civilization that’s very much alive, instead of extinct like they’d believed it to be. He still has a hard time wrapping his head around that fact. It might take days for him to.

Or at least that’s what he thinks. Until they come into the light.

It’s blinding, at first. So much so that even Steve has to close his eyes. But then he’s assaulted with sounds, thousands of them. He can hear the rumbling of lava under their feet, the sound of the stones being stepped on all around them, the strange lift in the wind when something flies closer to them, the laughter of children, and, further away still, the roar of huge waterfalls.

He opens his eyes. His breath hitches. Stops. He has to blink several times, bewildered, to make sure that he isn’t simply imagining things. Beside him, Nat and Sam seem to be in the same state of shock. Steve doesn’t know what he expected, but it certainly wasn’t this.

They’re on a stony outcrop, large enough, that leads straight to a bridge, crossing over the melting lava running in circles around an island. He can see movement in the lava, and gulps. He isn’t sure he wants to know what lives down there. But there is movement higher up, too. Their promontory isn’t the only one in this gigantic, cave-like stretch so far removed from the real world. There are others all around, and buildings – houses, maybe, or guard stations for the dozens of tunnels that go out from this place – with people milling about. They’re all linked to the island through miles long cables and bridges, smaller islands and outcrops of nature dispersed among them, seemingly floating above the molten lava. Between them, machines that remind Steve of smaller versions of the creature he’d fought in the ocean fly around. They’re silent but for the “woosh” of the air as they drift around, shaped as carps or sharks, riders comfortably settled at the helm. Most of those people, Steve can’t help but notice, have dark skin and white hair. But some, like the warrior escorting them, seem straight out of the surface. They all, though, have a crystal around their neck.

And then there is the island. It’s huge, overflowing with both water, nature, and light. All around it are giant sculptures, posed as if guarding the land within, waterfalls passing them and going down into the lava, the shock creating never-ending smoke. The buildings on the island are covered in either moss or glyphs shining bright blue. But what really steals Steve’s breath away is at the very top of the highest point on the island. Burning bright, circled by a ring of ever revolving stones, is a giant blue orb, buzzing with a power he can feel all the way to his core, and reflecting back to the crystal on his chest.

“It’s a lot to take in, uh?” The stranger asks, smug, and Steve has to shake his head to get his bearings back. He doesn’t reply. He wouldn’t know what to say. “Well, enough gaping already. If I have to kick you back out, I’d like to not spend my whole day doing that.” The man nudges them to the bridge, and it seems they’re all so shocked they can’t do anything but follow.

Nat’s eyes are trained on the island, straight ahead. Calculating, he would say, if he couldn’t see the light of absolute bewildered curiosity in them. Sam’s head keeps going back and forth every time one of the flying devices gets close to them, eyes ready to burst out of their sockets, want clearly written all over his features. And Steve… well, Steve is so lost his eyes keep drifting back to their captor, the only anchor he has when the whole world around him seems full to bursting with newness.

It’s like he is in 2012 again. Except this time, he doesn’t wake up sixty or so years later. This time, it’s like he went back thousands of years before, and then civilization took a completely different turn, and this – whatever this is – was born. Again, he would call it magic, if he weren’t a man of science.

It gets both stranger and more familiar as they reach the island. They’re greeted both by the whispers of the locals – though they don’t seem particularly skittish at the appearance of newcomers – and the sounds of a city in effervescence. Children laughing, running around, merchants selling their wares in many languages, some Steve knows, some he has never practiced, and some, mostly Atlantean, he didn’t even know existed before today. There aren’t as many machines, but there is a sprawling number of animals, though none of them look anything alike to what Steve has seen on the surface.

There’s the warrior’s companion, of course, never leaving the man’s side, but then there are a lot of… weirder, things. Small green flying creatures that remind Steve of the pterodactyls he’d been so fascinated by as a child, smooth, violet, dog-like animals with six legs and a flat tail following inhabitants around, and, somehow both the weirdest and the closest to what exists on the surface, giant crabs ridden by warriors, seemingly touring the city, as policemen would.

A nudge, on his calf. Steve startles, turning to find one of the dog-like beasts ready to chew on his shoes, a grin on its silly face. He swats it away gently, recoiling when the animal bares its teeth.

Beside him, someone chuckles. Their _captor_ chuckles, actually. He’s looking at Steve with a raised eyebrow and a smile tugging at the corner of his lips, obviously making fun of him. Before Steve can think of any smart retort, though, the warrior gets something resembling coal out of his bag, and throws it at the creature, which jumps through the air, its massive jaws snapping around the stone, eating it in one gulp, before he drops back, its tail shaking happily as it lands.

“Lava dogs,” the stranger shrugs, as if that explains anything.

Another one of them has started bothering Sam, and they have to make a quick exit before they get surrounded by the friendly but pushy beasts. The warrior leads them up some stairs, through alleys and up some more, until they arrive to a huge place, carved with intricate details all over. Nat’s already eyeing the designs, muttering translations to herself, but the warrior is taking them up another flight of stairs, these ones massive, leading to what can only be the palace. And, probably, to a king.

They get let through easily enough as the warrior throws a few sentences to each guard they pass, and Steve quickly gets to reassess his sexist bias. Because the person sitting on the throne, looking frighteningly regal, isn’t a king. It’s a _queen_. And he’s pretty sure she could kick even his ass.

He gets pocked in the calf with a stick once they’ve stopped in front of the throne – something gentle enough, but asserting. He knows what it means. So he does what he swore to never do again for any leader. He kneels. This isn’t his world, and, honestly, he’d like to survive at least another day. Make sure this isn’t just a dream made up by his running imagination.

“Please, rise.” The woman’s voice booms through the hall, warm but powerful. The voice of a leader. She looks at each of them in turn, brows furrowed; attempting, perhaps, to decipher who they are, and what they are doing here.

She speaks in Atlantean, then, addressing the warrior who’d brought them in. Steve only catches bits and pieces of the conversation – the names “James” and “Preston Whitmore”, mostly – but it doesn’t take a fool to understand the expression of grief that turns her lips downward as she learns of the man’s death. Did she know him? But she seems so young, and the man has been gone for decades already…

The queen turns to one of her guards. A quick order, and then he’s gone. Silence fills the hall, until he comes back, but not alone this time. A gangly man follows him, a young girl balanced against his hip. He sports blue tattoos and jewelry, just like the queen does, but his skin is pale, and his hair a light brown. It takes long seconds before Steve understands where he’s seen him before. By then the pictures jump back at him, faded things from a hundred years ago, older than he is.

Except the man has barely changed. He looks in his twenties still, not a single shadow of a wrinkle on him. And yet… and yet he must be a hundred and twenty years old. Because this man, standing in front of them, walking up to the queen with concern in his eyes, the child reaching with her little hands for the woman on the throne, is Milo Thatch. And unless he had access to an early version of the serum Erskine never told Steve about, then it’s impossible for him to still be alive.

He’s so surprised he doesn’t pay attention to the hushed whispers between Milo and the queen, looking at his partners instead, who seem to all have reached the same conclusions, eyes wide, the cogs of their brains turning.

“No,” the word is barely above a whisper, but in the silent room, it echoes as though a scream. Milo’s face crumbles, and the queen helps him to seat on another smaller throne, right next to hers, taking the child from his hands and embracing her instead.

“I’m sorry.”

Milo shakes his head. After a beat of silence, where nothing seems to move, he finally raises his head, his eyes meeting Steve’s straight ahead.

“So you come bearing the news of Whitmore’s death.” It’s not really a question, and Steve feels bad for what he’s about to say.

“Actually… I’m sorry sir, but though his death is what allowed us to come here, it wasn’t our primary goal to inform you of it. We… until today, we weren’t even sure if Atlantis existed, much less whether it was inhabited or not.”

Both the queen and Milo tense. She pushes the child back in his lap, and walks down the small steps separating her throne from the ground where Steve and his companions stand.

“Who are you?” she asks. Her tone is stilted, her eyes suspicious.

He could lie. He could tell her they’re barely adventurers on a quest for curiosity’s sake, or anything that doesn’t imply they’re a government founded research party, no matter how innocent they think themselves to be. But he somehow knows she’d have his head the moment she found out he’d lied to her. So he tells her the truth. He tells her about SHIELD, about Captain America, about the Falcon and Black Widow, and about the mission Bruce gave them. An impossible quest to find a lost empire. A childhood’s dream.

“And you mean to tell me you, or the people you work for, have no intentions of trying to invade us, or steal our knowledge, or anything that could jeopardize our safety or lives in any way?” The queen’s distrust doesn’t come as a surprise. Steve isn’t sure he would believe this very same story, coming from a total stranger. He’s seen what Atlantis is. He’s seen the peace, the growth, but mostly he’s seen only parts of its riches, of the tech and the crystals and that power source hanging high in the sky. He can understand why the queen is worried. There’d be much to make profit off of, surely, if they set their minds to it.

“As far as I’ve been informed, then no, your Highness.”

“And now that you’ve discovered us? Will you leave? Tell your superiors all about us, so they can come and pillage our cities later?”

Steve thinks about the glimpses. About the excitement in his heart at every touch from the crystal, and at seeing these people, thriving, their culture overflowing. He also thinks about what the surface would do to such a place if knowledge of its existence were to spread, and his heart sours.

“I’ll have to report back to my coordinator. I’d trust him with my life and I think… I think he will understand what protecting your secret means.”

“How can we be sure?”

“We can’t. I’m sorry.”

The queen seems to consider this for a long moment, so long Steve gets the urge to fidget, something he hasn’t done in years now, his soldier training too ingrained in his brain to allow jitters. That’s probably why he feels compelled to add, then:

“If that’s okay with you, though, me and my friends would like to stay, for a while.” He can see Sam turning to him in the corner of his vision, but before either he or Nat can interrupt him, he forges on, bolder than he ever thought himself capable to be. “I think it’d be good for us to discover your culture, to understand it, and why it needs to be protected. We might not get to share that knowledge with anyone else but… to me, it feels important.”

The queen looks at Milo, then. They seem to have an entire conversation of only eyebrows and glances, until Milo shrugs, says “I wasn’t much different when you met me,” and then settles back in his throne braiding the hair of the kid in his lap, an eye trained on what’s happening in the hall.

“You may stay…” the queen says, and Steve can already feel a sigh of relief build up in his chest, “but,” which quickly dissolves with the word, “you will be monitored by one of my warriors at all times, and you will not be permitted to leave the island unless you have settled the matter with us beforehand. I’ll also want a report of whatever is said to your superiors and what they answer. You’ll be staying as collateral, in case anything happens. Were we to withstand any invasion attempt from your people, you three WILL be sacrificed. Understood?”

The woman thinks like a soldier. Thinks like he does. He instantly takes a liking to her for it.

Steve nods, throws in a small curtsy that’s more awkward than not. His friends have not stopped eyeing him since he asked to stay. He knows they aren’t mad – they’re just as curious as he is, if not more – but the weight of their stares on his back is a constant awareness he can’t quite shake away.

The queen smiles at him, something decidedly warmer than before. “Well then, I welcome you in our city. I am the Queen of Atlantis, Kidagakash, and this is my husband, Milo Thatch. But I believe you know of him already.”

So she hadn’t missed their bewilderment when he’d come in. “We’ve… heard of him, in passing. We did not expect to see him alive.” The phrasing is a bit harsh, and Steve regrets it instantly, but neither Milo nor the queen seem offended by it. If anything, they both smile larger.

“You’ll find that the gem around your neck does more than shine prettily,” the queen says, cryptic.

It makes Steve suddenly very aware of the jewel he’s sporting, and he immediately goes to unfasten it from around his neck, ready to give it back to the people it belongs to.

“Keep it,” it’s Milo’s voice. “For now at least. It seems Whitmore’s crystal has found itself a new bearer, and I’m sure he’d be excited to know that the man is some kind of hero on the surface.”

Steve blushes at the compliment, however simple it is. No matter how long he stays as Captain America, he’ll probably never get used to the praises, to being put on a pedestal, just because he chose to fight. Just because someone gave him the means to fight. Captain America is just a man, after all. And his name is Steve Rogers.

“Thank you,” he says in a whisper, pulling the cord back around his neck, hiding the crystal amongst the folds of his shirt once more.

“James will show you to your living quarters. Guards will be assigned to you, able to guide you around the city, and answer your questions. Some of them, at least.”

They all bow one last time, before exiting the hall, and then the palace altogether. They’ve barely been outside a minute before Sam and Nat turn to him.

“That was risky,” Nat comments, a proud note to her voice.

“Foolish, one might say,” Sam adds.

Steve just shakes his head, and pushes onward, through them, to follow in the footsteps of their guide. James. He catalogs the name for later. Something tells him this isn’t the last time he’ll see the guy. He can’t say he’s mad about it.

As they walk to wherever they’re going to be housed, he takes in more of the scenery. It seems there are plants and water everywhere. Shiny, rustling things, the sounds a permanent background noise always welcomed. He stops to examine one of the flowers growing on the bank they’re walking along. It’s a vibrant violet, something straight out of a painting, with huge petals and bright yellow pistils.

He’s starting to lean forward to smell it when a firm hand on his shoulder stops him.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” James says, a grin on his face.

Steve raises his eyebrows at him in a silent question. As a demonstration, the Atlantean uses the grip of his knife, butting it gently against the closest pistil. The flower snaps closed around the hilt in a vice-like grip. Even after James gives it a tug, it doesn’t budge.

“Those are nasty things. Their sap is really useful for healing wounds, though,” he muses as he takes another knife from his bag, cutting the plant at the root. The petals fall away instantly, freeing his other weapon, and James sheathes both of them back before putting the flower in a jar.

Steve rises, taking another look at the flower, and definitely not at the dexterity with which the man uses his blades. “Thanks.” They start walking again, but somehow Steve feels compelled to add, maybe bragging a bit, “It probably wouldn’t have done me much harm, though.”

It’s James turn to observe him with a question on his face. “Accelerated healing,” Steve replies, not really willing to dwell just yet on everything the serum entails. On the constant buzz of his mind, the exacerbated memories that never quite leave him.

Thankfully, he’s saved from further embarrassing himself by a groaning Sam. “I’m gonna be sick,” he mutters with a grimace, though there’s the tiny shadow of a smile at the corner of his lips.

It also seems to snap James out of his daze, and he leads them to their home in silence after that.

Atlantean’s habitations are… weird, to say the least. They resemble old, rounded lanterns in their shape, more holes than walls, lit from within and without, plants growing everywhere, and water encircling each outcrop. Some are tiny, others huge, with levels. Bridges allow people to go from one house to another. Steve has to rub his eyes to make sure he isn’t dreaming.

The house James takes them to, which was recently vacated by a family, has two levels. The first one is a common room, strewn with colorful carpets and pillows, a table in the middle of it, a simple kitchen on one side, and a view on the neighbors all around. As beautiful as the place is, Steve isn’t sure any of them will like the idea of being seen or heard by everybody around.

Thankfully, the upstairs is mostly closed. There are two rooms, one with a double bed, one with a simple one, both with a window on the outside that can be closed by wood shutters, and a small bathroom. With an actual tap. Steve is surprised to notice it works just like one on the surface would, when he tries it. Hot and cold water, and everything in between.

“Some of us come from up there, just like you do,” James grins, leaning against the doorframe. Steve doesn’t have time to question him further before the man is back down and at the door – or, more like, crossing one of the three giant holes in the walls, already talking with other Atlantean soldiers. Probably their guards.

“Wait,” James turns, and Steve suddenly isn’t sure what he was about to say. It takes him a second to figure it out, in which the silence stretches, uncomfortable. “Thank you for guiding us, James,” he settles on. “And for saving my face,” he adds with a motion to the man’s bag, in which the flower still lies.

Surprise is quickly replaced by genuine happiness on the warrior’s face, and Steve feels his own respond in kind. “It was no problem, really. Also, please call me Bucky. Only Queen Kida calls me James.”

“Fine, then. See you around, Bucky,” the name sounds strange in Steve’s mouth. But not bad.

“Sure thing, pal. And try not to do anything stupid while I’m not there.”

And with that, he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Leb ese-en dup?" means "Who are you?"
> 
> -
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> I'm moving out of my apartment tomorrow, so there might be a tiny delay in the posting of the chapter, though I'll try to get it to you guys as soon as I can!


	3. First steps

Their first night amongst the Atlanteans is… strange. They’re brought food by the soldiers guarding them, presenting it as a gift from the queen and her husband, informing them that their vehicle and its contents were brought back from the cave and they’ll be able to get what they need from it tomorrow.

The food isn’t bad, really. Steve has eaten far worse when he was in the army. Sam and Nat have, too, which doesn’t prevent Sam from fussing with his food as it moves. The flavors are new and exciting, and the two warriors eat with them, introducing themselves as Okoye and Ayo.

After Bucky’s jest about some of the Atlanteans coming from the surface, Steve can’t help but observe the women more closely. Both have their head shaved, though they do sport the dark skin and clear eyes he seems to have seen in most of the people living here. They’re also both heavily tattooed, the blue patterns covering their shoulders and faces. Not everyone is, from the glimpses Steve got of the inhabitants of the island. He wonders what the difference is, but doesn’t dare ask.

Sam shares the bedroom with the double bed with him, giving Nat her privacy in her own room. Neither he nor Sam manage to sleep, though. Maybe it’s the buzz from the day’s excitement not quite settling down, the new sounds, new smells. They end up going back downstairs, the lanterns still shining bright, only to find Natasha sat on a pillow, her back against the wall, her closed eyes immediately opening when they enter.

“Trouble sleeping?” she asks, and they both nod.

They spend the night chatting in hushed whispers, theorizing about this and that, or just basking in each other’s presence, and the very existence of this place.

“Bruce is never gonna believe us,” Nat huffs at some point.

Steve jumps upright. “Bruce!” he shouts

“Shhhh.” His friends are glowering at him, looking around to make sure he hasn’t woken anyone.

“Dammit, I completely forgot to call him.”

“Of course you did, you were too busy getting lost in Bucky’s eyes,” Sam taunts, making Nat laugh.

Steve promptly flips him off, and goes back upstairs to call Bruce.

The signal flickers a bit, the static making Steve cringe, but he finally manages to get in contact with Bruce.

“Steve, hi! I was wondering when you’d call. Anything new?”

By way of introductions, Steve asks, “You said this was a secure line. Are you 100% sure?”

This gets him silence, a bit of shuffling, then muttering, before Bruce comes back online. “Affirmative.”

“Well then go sit somewhere, because you’re not ready from what I’m about to tell you.”

Steve recounts everything. He doesn’t leave many details out – only the embarrassing part where he would have gotten half of his face eaten by a flower if it weren’t for a nice Atlantean – and stresses multiple times the queen’s requests, and threats. Bruce doesn’t utter a word throughout. Steve isn’t sure if it’s because he’s too shocked to talk, or simply intently listening to him.

“Wow… that’s… a lot. To take in.”

“I know,” Steve nods, even though Bruce can’t see him.

“We should probably tell Fury.”

Steve winces. He knows Bruce is right, but the more people know, the more Atlantis is at risk. He hasn’t even spent a full day here, but he feels, deep in his heart, that this place is worth protecting. Knows it’s safer if it remains hidden, far away from those who would mean it harm. And as much good as Fury has done… Steve isn’t sure he trusts him to do that.

“I don’t know, Bruce.”

A sigh, on the other side of the line. “I know you’re worried, Steve. I know what you’re thinking. But Fury… Fury isn’t like that. For all of his bad sides, he isn’t that kind of guy.”

Steve almost believes him. Almost. “Even if he is. He doesn’t need to know, Bruce.”

Bruce scoffs. “You think, for a single moment, that he isn’t going to ask about your whereabouts one of these days? You think that when I tell him something like “Oh, yeah, they still haven’t found it, but they’re searching, though”, he isn’t going to see right through me? You give me too much credit. Or don’t give him enough.”

It’s true. Bruce isn’t a very good liar to begin with, and Fury is worse than an actual lie detector. If he asks, the truth will unravel. And Fury isn’t going to be happy he was lied to.

“I just…”

“You wanna do what’s right, I get it. But now is not the time to go all Mister Morals on me. And technically, I’m the coordinator of this expedition, so I get to make the call.”

Steve sighs, exasperated. “Fine, tell him! But if anything happens, Bruce, I won’t be the one who has to feel responsible about it.” And with that, he hangs up.

He will feel responsible. If anything were to happen to this place, to the city and its inhabitants, just because three government mandated idiots managed to make their way there, he will never forgive himself.

Nat and Sam are waiting for him downstairs.

“Bruce is going to tell Fury.”

Nat’s mouth settles in a thin line. “Because of course he is.” She shakes her head. “Can’t really blame him though, I’d probably do the same in his stead. But I don’t like it. And I’m guessing you don’t either.”

He lets himself drop against some cushions with a sigh. This is all too much. This day, this week, this whole LIFE. He just needs to rest.

That’s how he falls asleep. Uncertain and kind of scared, surrounded by his friends, in a fascinating place he might just have damned into oblivion.

*

When he wakes up, it’s to the morning light gently suffusing inside the room, illuminating the shapes of his friends, also rolled up on the cushions around him. One of them has put a blanket around his shoulders after he fell asleep, and he clutches it for a second before going upstairs to take a shower, making as little noise as possible.

The sound of his footsteps is quickly swallowed by the gurgle of the small river flowing outside, the twits of the birds, the rustle of vegetation. Do the Atlanteans get used to this? Do they not hear the sounds anymore, or notice the bright colors their world is laden with? If only they knew how grim it is, up there. How gray and polluted and sad.

Even though he saw it yesterday, Steve is still surprised to find the tap isn’t some kind of vision his sluggish mind supplied for him. And, as Bucky promised, there IS hot water with it. The shower is heavenly, as short as he makes it. He does feel a bit icky about putting on the same, sweat soaked clothes as yesterday, but he doesn’t really have a choice. Their stuff is still… somewhere on the island. He isn’t sure where.

Back down, Okoye is waiting for them.

“Good morning,” Steve greets, toweling off his hair so he doesn’t drip anywhere on the colorful upholstery.

She doesn’t smile at him, but she does bow her head ever so slightly, so he takes that as a win. “To you too, Mister Rogers.”

“Ayo isn’t with you?”

_That_ makes her smile. A menacing lilt to her mouth, something that reminds him all too well of Natasha, before she sends someone to the ICU. “You think I wouldn’t be enough to stop you three from escaping?”

Steve is about to imply just that, what with him being Captain America, and his two friends just as highly trained super heroes, but before he can, he shuts his mouth, reminding himself that he is, in fact, in foreign territory, and Okoye seems confident enough in her skills to actually mean the threat. They also have no idea of the secrets the crystal holds. He isn’t feeling particularly ready to test any of his theories out.

Okoye’s laugh breaks through the air, loud and rumbling like a river. “You’re too serious, Captain.” She taps her staff against the ground in a series of rhythmic patterns, seemingly not noticing she’s doing it. But her every move is practiced, conscious. It shows on her face. “We have each been assigned to guide you and keep an eye on you for half a day. We do need to sleep, after all.”

She waits until Sam and Nat are back down, both as clean as they could manage, before she actually announces the reason of her coming to meet them. “I’m to take all three of you to get your properties back, and give you a quick tour of the city if you wish it.”

The Jeep is parked somewhere behind the palace, in a naturally enclosed space with rocks all around and a couple of guards that Okoye greets with familiarity. It takes them no time to ruffle through the bags, taking what they might need, with only minor inspection from their guide. She makes sure they leave any trigger weapons in the car – including Nat’s precious gun, which Okoye promises will be returned to her when they leave – but allows them to keep blades and such. Sam’s wings, carefully hidden in an inconspicuous square case, don’t raise any suspicion.

There’s one problem though.

The shield is missing. Steve searches for it everywhere, goes through every inch of the trunk and then the inside of the car, without so much as a sign of it. And it’s not like he could easily miss it.

Nat and Sam are both throwing him worried glances, knowing exactly what is amiss, and Okoye eyes him warily, wondering no doubt what the ruckus is about. “Missing something?”

“Yeah, no, everything is fine,” Steve lies. It’s not like he can tell her someone has stolen his weapon – the very symbol of who, WHAT he is. He doesn’t want the Atlanteans to panic, and he’s pretty sure whoever has the shield won’t have the strength to use it in any way that could harm others anyway. Still, he has to ask: “No one but the warriors had access to this vehicle, right?”

Face closed, Okoye takes a moment to think, then nods. “Why do you ask?”

“There’s sensitive information, and equipment, in here.” It’s not too far from the truth, though he doesn’t mention that some of the equipment has disappeared. “Wouldn’t want citizens to stumble onto something they could hurt themselves with.”

Okoye doesn’t seem entirely convinced, but she doesn’t pry.

Once they’re all geared up, she takes them on a small tour of the center of the island. Steve would feel ecstatic, if the dread at the loss of his shield wasn’t creeping up his back, seizing his lungs, never quite letting go. The shield… it had been made specifically for him, all those years ago, by Howard Stark. An eccentric, but gifted man. And even though there were times, during his first few months as Cap, when he didn’t have that weapon, it feels like a second skin now. Without it, a part of Steve is simply missing. It makes him feel vulnerable.

He keeps ruminating, though he does try to tune in on Okoye’s explanations as much as possible. They cross the great square again, with all the markings in the floor, and then they’re in the market. Or at least a small part of it. It overflows, filled with wonders. Food, clothes, equipment, everything is gathered here, making it hard to focus on even one piece at a time.

“Our system is trade based, contrary to yours. Since everyone contributes to the society in their own way, it’s easy to exchange wares.”

Nat, mouth slightly agape, eyes widening as she mentally writes down every little detail in her mind, turns to her. “What do you have to trade?”

Okoye smiles that side smile again. “No physical wares for us. Our protection is our gift to the people. You could say we get free stuff.”

“What about us?” Sam asks with a grimace, inspecting different plates filled with insects that are still very much alive, and very much trying to escape.

“You’re guests. You also get a lot of free stuff, though every Atlantean would be utterly grateful if you had something to trade. Items from the surface are scarce, here, which makes them rare.”

“And yet a lot of what you have is finer than what we could ever dream of up there,” Steve comments, a murmur more for himself than the others, as he strokes a light blue striped fabric delicately.

One of the flying fishes passes above their head, and Steve can see that Sam is about to ask what they are, and probably how they are powered, when someone else bumps into their guide.

“Okoye!” the young Atlantean woman exclaims, and she jumps around a bit before giving a one-armed hug to the guard, who returns it with a pat on the woman’s back.

“Shuri. Nice to see you.”

Shuri. The name rings a bell, and it takes all of a second for Steve to remember the engraving on the walls they’d found yesterday. But the words had seemed so old, weathered down by time, and this woman, well… she looks barely over eighteen. It’s then he remembers Milo’s words, and the fact that he’s supposed to be over a hundred years old.

So, the crystal might grant immortality. Steve knows more than one person who might be interested in that. Old demons, mostly. Still, he gets even more nervous about Bruce talking to Fury, and the possible consequences of their discovery. So he takes this new information, and buries it deep down in his brain. He has no intention of using it for anything anyway.

“Are those the whities that got brought in yesterday?” Shuri asks excitedly, turning to them. “No offense to you, man,” she adds just for Sam, who’s watching her with his mouth open and eyes widened.

Okoye rolls her eyes, but extends her hand, ready, no doubt, to make the introductions. Before she can, however, she’s interrupted by a deep, heavily accented voice. “Shuri, that’s no way of talking of guests.”

The man is also obviously Atlantean, white hair cropped rather short, blue eyes a much darker color than some other inhabitants, just like Shuri.

“Spoilsports,” Shuri retorts with a pout, and what Steve can only guess is an Atlantean insult.

“T’Challa, I presume,” Nat says, taking everyone by surprise. The atmosphere tenses suddenly, the man looking at her with suspicion in his eyes, so she adds, “we found markings, on the outskirts of the city. Yours, I believe.”

Steve can see Shuri blush even through her dark complexion. She chuckles, embarrassed. When T’Challa turns to her, and starts asking for explanations, she just waves it away. “This is T’Challa indeed. My brother. We’re Okoye’s friends. And you are?”

They introduce themselves, presentations quickly devolving into conversations, especially about recent technological development on the surface. Shuri is apparently some kind of science genius, which means she gets along like a house on fire with Sam, and Steve has to tune them out. But while the new encounter had been a good distraction from his current worries, being alone with his thoughts means they come right back to bite at his ankles, all too eager to muddle his mind and make him panic.

“Something wrong?”

Steve stops himself from jumping only by sheer force of will. T’Challa has crept close to him, so softly he never heard him come. He’s looking at Steve with genuine concern in his eyes, and Steve immediately feels his intestines knot with guilt for having to lie to him.

“It’s only… well, everything is different here, and I guess I’ll need a few days before I truly get my footing.”

T’Challa nods. “I see.”

Both of the young Atlanteans abandon them when they leave the market, having errands to run, and the peace and silence only make Steve’s gnawing worry louder. Images of someone stealing the shield and then hurting themselves or others with it because they don’t know how to use it, or worse, of the shield simply falling down and into the lava as the Atlanteans made their car cross a bridge flash into his mind without him wanting to, and he has to clench his fists to anchor himself back into reality, as they make their way back to their house.

The neighbors – a family of four, two women and a young boy and girl – greet them with smiles and waves as they pass, and Steve barely finds the strength in him to wave back at them. Sam even glares at him, and Nat manhandles him until he’s going back upstairs to change out of his filthy clothes once they’re inside.

At least the change does lift his spirits a bit. The button down is light, comfortable in this humidity, and the pants are military grade, which means they won’t tear easily. He looks at himself in the mirror, at the first prickle of beard on his jaw. He shaves it in practiced motions, but he’s so out of it he cuts himself on one of his last passes. He hisses, dabs a cloth against the wound. It’s superficial. Nothing the serum won’t quickly cure.

And yet, something strange happens. The crystal around his neck warms, starts glowing. Steve takes it in his palm to examine it, and finds that the contact turns his whole hand a turquoise color, the feeling soothing just as it is icy. Eyes wide, eyebrows rising in surprise, he lets the pendant fall back, and touches his fingers, very slowly, to his face, to see if the color and feeling might spread.

As his left index touches the cut he’d just made, the wound stitches itself back together, and disappears.

Steve blinks. Again. And again. The glow fades, but the wound doesn’t reappear, and he’s left to face the fact that, whatever the pendant did, it healed him.

He goes back to his friends with this knowledge. Sam looks at him like he’s gone mad only for a second. He trusts Steve, above all else. Even when it seems like he’s spouting nonsense.

The moment Okoye is back inside, followed closely by Ayo with their meal, they tackle her with questions.

“The crystal,” Steve says, holding the delicate stone between his hands, still flabbergasted that such a small piece of nothing holds such power, “it can heal. What else can it do?”

Okoye raises an eyebrow at him. Ayo stares.

“How do you know it heals?”

“Because it just stitched back one of my cuts,” Steve replies, voice wavering, still unsure.

It doesn’t seem like the Atlanteans expect his answer, either. They spend a while in silence, and Steve gets the feeling he shouldn’t have been able to do what he just did. But then Okoye sighs, sits on a cushion, grabs a plate, and starts eating, like she knows this will be a long conversation.

“The crystal… well, we all have one. As you might have guessed it, that’s what gives us our superior longevity and youth,” all three of them nod at this. Steve had suspected, since Milo sure as hell didn’t look like he was a hundred years old. “But it’s not the only thing it does. It can, as you’ve just witnessed, heal some wounds, and is also useful in turning our vehicles on, for example.”

By vehicles, Steve suspects she means the fish-like flying devices he’s seen around the island.

“How?” It’s Nat asking the question this time.

Okoye hesitates. She looks over at Ayo and they start conversing in another language. Not Atlantean, from what Steve can gather. Okoye obviously gathered Nat could speak it from their meeting with Shuri and T’Challa in the market earlier. He thinks it might be a dialect from an African country, but he could be wrong. Whatever they’re debating about, they seem to settle on the same idea, nodding at each other.

“We can’t disclose the information in its entirety. For that, you would have to converse with the queen. Know only that whatever power it holds, it is sentient much like a dormant beast is.”

Pinning Steve with an intense yet soft look, Ayo adds, “The feat it performed for you, when you did not know it was even possible, is a great gift. Do not waste it.”

A warning, again. Steve doesn’t need a reminder that even the very fact of staying here chances the risk of fucking things up for the Atlanteans. He’s very much aware of that. For a second, he even curses Bruce’s curiosity. If they had never discovered the place, they would never have put it under SHIELD scrutiny.

With that, his earpiece rings. Steve excuses himself out of the room and upstairs, in the bedchamber, before he taps the com link.

“Hello?”

“Ha, Steve!” Bruce’s voice rings through. Speak of the devil… “I’m glad I could reach you. Everything alright?”

“Everything alright.” He wishes he could tell Bruce everything they’ve seen so far, every discovery, every fascinating little piece of culture. But he holds back. He has to.

“Good good. Listen, I talked to Fury,” Steve tenses at the words, but Bruce carries on without awaiting his reaction, “and he was really cool about it. Said you were right to be worried. He doesn’t plan to do anything about the Atlantis, though he’d love for you to give him a detailed account of it once you come back.”

Steve wants to believe him. Truly, he does. But somehow the fact that Fury is letting him take a vacation free of charge in a mysterious place doesn’t sit well with him.

“He did say that you were to come back in two weeks at most though. The outside world might need you,” Bruce jokes, and Steve chuckles.

He has a bad feeling about this.

*

They spend the rest of the day, and the next, exploring the center of the island and asking Okoye and Ayo every question that pops into their minds. They even end up riding ketaks, Sam so ecstatic he nearly falls off from behind Ayo once they’re hovering in the air.

It’s beautiful. Ethereal. All of it. The nature, the buildings, the people. Steve’s heart has to stop from the sheer greatness of it sometimes. He marvels at everything. But in the back of his mind, there’s still worry. And, more than everything, there’s the definite lack of his shield, and what its disappearance could entail.

They’re on one of these outings when they meet Bucky again. Steve is so in his bubble he doesn’t notice him at first. It’s only when he hears a growl behind him, and turns to find the weird fanged dog behind him, that he notices the warrior.

Bucky waves at him, and Steve can feel a smile creeping up his face.

“Hi,” he says, nearly shy, and he spiritually shakes himself up to get rid of the awkward tension he probably radiates.

Bucky doesn’t seem to notice, occupied as he is with petting the beast at his side, his mechanical arm, which reminds Steve a bit of the creature in the ocean, reflecting the afternoon’s light. “Fancy seeing you here. What’re you doing?”

Steve shrugs, “Touring, I guess. Helping Okoye and Ayo with the groceries.”

A low whistle, and then Bucky chuckles. “How gentleman-y of you.”

“Bucky,” Okoye greets with a nod and a half smile as she passes them, arms full of seemingly alive pasta. The man returns the greeting. “What are you doing here anyway?” she asks then. “You’re usually just lost in your little world with all your little friends.” At that, she smiles more fully, and slips a bit of what looks like meat to the animal by Bucky’s side, which swallows it in one fell swoop.

Bucky pats the two bags around his hips. “Had to resupply. Those guys grow hungry fast, and you know what they’re like when they’re angry.”

Okoye winces. Steve just observes the chatter, unsure what they’re talking about. Bucky must pick up on his confusion, because he turns to him, and apologizes. “Ha, sorry. I’m… sort of a vet, I guess you’d call me. I take care of the island’s creatures.”

“Really?” It sounds so intriguing. Steve has seen some of those beasts on his few outings, and whilst he’d been honestly quite fascinated by them, he can’t imagine what taking care of them must be like.

“Affirmative,” Bucky nods. And then, after a pause, “You wanna see ‘em?”

Steve doesn’t want to appear too eager, so he settles on a “Sure,” and adds a shrug for emphasis. Gods, could he be any more awkward.

When he turns to Nat and Sam, to know if they want to join him, Nat is seemingly engrossed in a conversation with a local, and Sam just straight up declines, saying he’s planned to go on another ketak ride. Okoye shares a few words with Bucky – maybe a warning, maybe just asking him to keep an eye on Steve, since it appears she won’t be coming with – and then everything is settled.

“Let’s go then!”

Bucky takes him to the edge of the city, and to another flying engine. It’s slimmer than the carp design, emulating a hammerhead shark instead, and Bucky jumps inside it like he’s spent his whole life doing it. The beast follows, pushing itself in the back seat, lazily sprawling there. “Come on, you twit, leave a bit of room for our guest.” Begrudgingly, the animal rises, holing itself against one of the sides, leaving some space, albeit small, for Steve to climb in.

“Bawteb,” Bucky murmurs, patting the beast’s head.

“Is that his name?”

“What, “Bawteb”?” Bucky chuckles. “No, it just… I guess it would translate to “Good boy” in English. This one doesn’t have a name, it doesn’t like the idea of it.”

Bucky and his fanged dog - Art by [Nel](https://twitter.com/NelTheWarlock)

Steve kind of wants to ask how Bucky knows that, but this animal DOES seem pretty opinionated, so he isn’t really surprised. He’s about to ask Bucky another question – he isn’t even sure what yet, probably something stupid – when the Atlantean starts his vehicle, pushing the crystal around his neck into a small hole on the control pad, turning it left and right. The machine alights, hovers into the air, and then Bucky is making them fly at incredible speed, over the city, and further away from the center of the island.

Steve watches, flabbergasted, as they pass towers covered in carvings and moss, or other, smaller residential areas much like his own. From afar, he can see the bridges, going out and into the periphery of the giant cave they’re in, machines much like their own buzzing about. He has the sudden urge to take his phone out, snap a shot of the magnificence of Atlantis, but he stops himself. No proof. He’ll not damn these people more than he already has.

They’ve nearly reached the coast of the island when Bucky starts his descent. They’re in the middle of nowhere, dense vegetation all around. At least, that’s what Steve thinks, until they finally meet the ground.

The buildings look more earth-like than their own house, stacked close to each other in an intricate pattern, with a few particularly sturdy ones, reminding him instead of the main square and the palace. Steve wonders how many people live here, but when they go inside, Bucky putting the food and other supplies he’d bought at the market away in one of the cluttered rooms, it appears deserted.

“You live here alone?” The words are out of his mouth before he can realize the implication of them, and he tenses.

Bucky smirks. “What, you planning on getting rid of me and hiding my corpse somewhere?”

With a wince, Steve shakes his head, “Gross.”

They’re back outside now, the beast having vanished, Bucky walking decidedly toward only he knows where. “I guess you could say that, yeah. If you don’t count the thirteen babies in the nursery, six different animals in the stables because I have to care for them regularly, and then all the ones that come and go as they please, the fanged dog and Goh-yah amongst them.”

“Goh-yah?”

“I’m taking you to see him now,” Bucky winks, and with that, the conversation ends.

Steve expects whatever that Goh-yah is to be pretty similar to what he’s seen so far: dog or bird like creatures, somewhat dinosaur like, maybe with either more eyes or more legs than what you’d expect. And in a way… well, in a way, he isn’t wrong. Except that the creature staring back at him is around seven feet tall, and has a beak so sharp it could stab him through the heart in one fell swoop.

The beast runs to them. It’s _charging_ them, Steve realizes, the very flat front of its head directed straight at their bodies, and Steve means to grab for Bucky and get him out of the way, but before he can, the animal is on them. He cringes, ready for the collision. And instead opens his eyes to Bucky hugging the huge beast’s head and laughing.

“Don’t be scared,” he teases, scratching its giraffe-like neck. “Goh-yah is a big sap. Couldn’t hurt a fly. He’s just very affectionate, and not very aware of his strength.” Which the animal instantly demonstrates, pushing at Bucky with his beak, even pecking him. Thankfully, it’s on the metal arm, which only resonates with the sound of the molestation. “Goh-yah, no,” Bucky says, stern. Goh-yah stops.

“What… what _is_ it?” Steve can’t help but ask. The beast is a strange mix between a horse, a giraffe, and a bird. It’s tall, limbs and neck elongated, face flat and triangular with a solid overgrowth at the base of its skull. Its eyes are tiny, and just as dark as its leathery skin. It keeps emitting clicks and growls, sounding nearly playful.

Bucky and Goh-Yah - Art by [Nel](https://twitter.com/NelTheWarlock)

Bucky has to push Goh-yah away again, as it encroaches in his space, “ _He_ is a Nipuk. Pretty rare species here. But I helped this one get out of his egg and raised him myself, so now he’s so imprinted on me he won’t leave my side.” Bucky laughs some more, and, with a swift motion, gets something out of his bag and throws it into the air. Goh-yah’s flattened beak slaps around it, the juice of whatever it was splashing around. Steve avoids it at the last second. “He’s just a big lovable idiot.”

“If you say so…”

“Go on!” Bucky nudges, “Pet him. You’ll see.”

Unconvinced and uncertain, Steve raises his hand. Goh-yah, without an ounce of hesitation, comes and headbutts him. It’s a strong headbutt, something that would probably make a normal human-being stumble back a couple of paces, but Steve is anything but normal, and he also really doesn’t want to lose face in front of Bucky, so he doesn’t budge. The animal seems to take it as an invitation to more shenanigans, and he starts to prance around him, towering above Steve’s head, clicking his beak.

“He likes you,” Bucky says, arms crossed, a smile playing on his lips.

Turning every few seconds to keep his eyes on the Nipuk making his rounds around him, Steve replies, “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

Bucky laughs, and then he’s pushing past Goh-yah, a stick in hand which he throws as far as he can – which is, honestly, very far. Steve is impressed. Especially seeing how the Nipuk takes off running after it. “Come on”, Bucky tells him, rushing away before Goh-yah comes back.

He takes Steve back to the settlement, inside one of the sturdier installations. “This is the nursery. I keep the babies in here, either the ones that are sick, or just the ones that are too young to fend for themselves outside.”

Steve would have guessed what it was without Bucky telling him. The scent of babies is somehow familiar, not the exact same as humans or puppies, but the resemblance striking, nonetheless. And the hollering and crying of the young is difficult to miss.

“Feeding time,” Bucky explains, a fond glint in his eye.

He starts preparing all sorts of concoctions, and Steve watches him move, mesmerized by the preciseness of his every action.

“Can I help?”

Bucky raises his head from what he’s doing and blinks, like for a moment, he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. He nods, and points at a set of buckets. “Sure. You can pour some of that milk in those for the older fangy ones, and then there are three bottles to fill with that,” he points at another mixture, “for our very own pterodactyls.”

The task is easy enough, but Steve makes sure not to spill any of the precious liquid around as he pours. “Are they really pterodactyls?” he asks, curious. Logically, dinosaurs died way back, before the Atlantis sank. But Steve has seen Jurassic Park, okay. It’s a classic. Maybe the Atlantean technology would have been able to replicate a similar phenomenon.

But Bucky shakes his head, laughing. “No, not really. They’ve evolved to something very close to them, but they’re their very own brand of creatures.”

Feeding the babies is… an experience. The buckets are for a troop of young fanged dogs, eight of them divided into two big reinforced pens. They’re prowling the area, turning immediately to them once they hear the bucket jingling.

“Careful with your fingers when you put them down,” Bucky points to the bucket and then to the creatures with his chin. “They can’t see, and they’re hungry, so they’re very likely to get a piece of you on the way.” Then, he adds, with a half-smile, “I know you told me you don’t mind losing body parts, but still, it’d be a shame.”

Steve hides his blush by pushing over the fence of the pen, and dropping the buckets in, as gently as he can. True to Bucky’s word, the beasts come running, jaws snapping, and Steve has to backtrack quickly.

“They can’t see?” he asks, and for the first time, he notices that the pupils of their multiple eyes are a full color, a depthless obsidian in which he can see his reflection.

“Nope. I mean, not in the way we can anyway. I suspect there’s a thing where they can see what’s around them in vibrations. You can’t hear it, it’s too low for our ears, but they’re always growling, like they’re using resonance to orient themselves. It’s pretty clever, uh?”

Clever doesn’t even cover it. Steve stays glued in his spot, watching as the beasts fight over the milk buckets, their sightless eyes and fangs so alien to him. There’s always more to discover, on this island. More more _more_. So much stimulation, so much learning, and yet everything seems calm and in harmony. His brain has never felt so silent. So at ease. It scares him.

“Come on, the babies are waiting.”

Bucky throws a tiny baby bottle at him and enters a caged aviary. The shrieks of three tiny green goblins immediately echo into the air, the sound grating. Bucky catches one of them from where it’s perched, wings opened but useless, trying to appear bigger than it is, and pushes it into Steve’s arms.

“You ever fed a baby?” he asks.

Strangely ashamed, Steve shakes his head no.

“Don’t worry. Just cradle it into your elbow, and tip the bottle against its mouth. Those are old enough to know when they’re full, you won’t overfeed it.” And with that, he catches the two remaining creatures, and starts feeding them.

The beast is tiny in Steve’s arms. So delicate, so fragile. It could snap at any moment, and Steve is worried that he’s doing things wrong, even though it seems perfectly content to suckle on its milk, noises of appreciation coming out of its mouth every now and then.

“You look as starstruck as I probably did when I first came here.”

Steve jolts, surprised by Bucky’s voice, and the baby in his arm whines in disapprobation. He has to right himself before he can answer. “Came here? You’re not from Atlantis, then?” Steve had guessed as much, with the man’s coloring, but he hadn’t wanted to assume things.

“Ha, no. New York born and raised, baby!” He seems very proud saying it.

New York. Somehow that’s not surprising at all. Thinking of the city makes Steve’s heart contract and ache. It reminds him of his mom, and of the stories she used to tell him. But New York is where she died. New York is where a tiny Steve met a genius scientist, who turned his life around. Thinking about those memories brings back bittersweet pain – Erskine’s kindness, Peggy’s fierce smile, the Howling Commandos -, reminds Steve of what he has lost. And going down that train of thought reminds him of a new piece to add to the collection. He doesn’t know where the shield is. He’d kept an eye open for it, especially on the market, but to no avail.

“What’s eating you?”

The slang is so familiar Steve doesn’t pick up on it, just answers the question, “I… it’s nothing.”

When he raises his head, Bucky is looking at him with genuine concern. “No, come on, you can tell me. Promise I won’t snitch,” he adds cheekily.

“I lost something. Something that means a lot to me. It was in our vehicle when we came here but… when we went to retrieve our things, it wasn’t there anymore.”

Bucky’s eyebrows are drawn together, like he’s really thinking it through. “And it couldn’t have fallen during transport?”

“It’s unlikely, since it’s so big. But not impossible.”

“How big are we talking?”

Steve sighs, and decides to Hell with it. If someone can help him find the shield in this huge place, it might as well be Bucky, and telling him what it is wouldn’t hurt with that. “A big, round shield. Painted red and blue. Thirty to forty inches, approximately. I never checked.”

Bucky’s eyes are wide when he answers. “Yeah, that’s… that’s something that would definitely not go amiss.”

“I know…”

Silence falls around them, the babies slowly but surely emptying their bottles, while Steve ruminates his predicament. Until something, some words from earlier hit him.

“You’re from the thirties,” Steve whispers, shocked.

Bucky stills. “How d’you know that?”

“The way you talk. And you said you were from New York? Where?”

Suspicious, but apparently ready to play Steve’s game, Bucky’s answers.

“Brooklyn?”

A pause, and then Steve’s laugh. An outright, genuine, full-belly laugh, like he hasn’t had in a very long time. “Seriously? Jesus, we could have been neighbors! I can’t believe this.”

“Wait. You’re from Brooklyn too?”

Steve nods, smiling.

“But… you can’t be from the thirties. You’re from up there, you don’t have the crystal.” Bucky seems perplexed, face drawn, but it lacks any weight, especially with a small green creature climbing his shoulder, the other whining in his arms.

“That’s… a long, and complicated story.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

Steve hesitates. It’s not like his origins, the way he was created, became a war machine, and then spent decades under the ice are any secret, but he doesn’t want Bucky’s attitude toward him to change after he hears it. He doesn’t want to be treated like a thing to worship. Here, on this island, he’s very much human. And he wants to keep it that way.

From the corner of his eye, he can see that the day is already setting. He’s spent longer here than he’d anticipated. He’s glad for it, though. He feels lighter than when he’d first stepped out in this weird ranch, and that’s mostly thanks to Bucky. Maybe that means he owes him the truth, or at least a part of it.

“It might be a bit late for that today. Next time?” he asks, and if his voice sounds a bit too hopeful, well… Bucky doesn’t seem to pick up on it.

“Next time it is, then.”

The ride back to Steve’s house is even more beautiful than their first flight. Even though there’s no sun here, the huge orb that flies hundreds of feet in the air, above the city, seems to dim every night, to allow for the inhabitants – humans or otherwise – to sleep. With the reflection of the ever-running lava around the island, and the shimmer of the rivers down below, it basks the whole city in a soft and pale glow. Something straight out of a dream.

“Thanks for the ride,” Steve says as he disembarks, the lights of the house already lit up. He can make out the silhouettes of Nat, Sam and Ayo eating inside, and warmth seeps straight through his bones.

“No worries. Anytime,” Bucky assures. “And next time you wanna come over, just ask Okoye or Ayo, they’ll find a way to get to me. I’m pretty secluded out there, as you’ve seen.”

A nod. One last goodbye. Somehow, Steve feels lesser, once Bucky’s aktirak has zoomed out in the sky and back to the other side of the island. Like he’s missing something, and this time, it isn’t the shield. But his friends are waiting inside, so Steve shakes himself, and moves.

“Your date went alright?” are the first words that greet him once he crosses the threshold, and Steve curses himself for thinking going back to those idiots was a good idea. Nat is looking at him like a cat ready to eat a mouse, and Sam, though he tries to appear neutral, is anything but. Only Ayo seems unbothered, though she’s stopped eating to greet him.

“You know what? I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.”

Sam snickers. “You just did, man.”

He and Nat burst out laughing, and, with a sigh but a warm heart, Steve plops himself down on a cushion to eat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Nipuk" means "Fool", which, considering they're all dumbasses, is a fitting name for the species (they were created by Nel!)
> 
> "Goh-Yah" literally translates to "Cheese-cheese" which we all (Loeily, Nel and I) found funny for this particular dumbass!
> 
> -
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> See you tomorrow!


	4. Old and New

The next morning, Sam drags them out of bed and into the city with a smile that could rival a child’s on Christmas. He won’t tell them where they’re going, just that they’re going to like it. But since Ayo is following them at a leisurely pace, uncaring, it probably means that whatever they’re going to see is safe.

The building Sam takes them to is HUGE. Built in the same gray material as the rest of the city center, but twenty feet tall, with a huge door-less entrance, letting them peek inside and into the fray. The place is literally buzzing with activity. There are people and machines everywhere, loads of ketak and aktirak, and Steve realizes this must be some sort of vehicle bay, with engineers running all around to fix broken pieces and make sure they’re in pristine flying condition. He suddenly understands why Sam was so excited.

As they pass the threshold, he’s surprised to find an impressive number of surface tech being used, as well. Someone is wielding a blow torch while another Atlantean holds his pendant against it, both of them trying to put the tail of an aktirak back in one piece. And it seems to work. Some of the benches are laden with wrenches and pipes and all sorts of materials, some probably Atlantean. It’s a true melting pot.

Someone waves at them, hailing their little group closer. There’s a mask on his face, likely to protect him from any projections. When he lowers it, Steve recognizes T’Challa.

“Nice to see you guys again,” he greets with a smile, putting a bit of distance between him and the men still working on… Steve isn’t sure what. “Came to get a glimpse of what we can do?” The question is teasing, but not hostile or antagonistic in anyway, and Steve relaxes into it. He was worried these people would be under strict guidelines to not let them take more than a glimpse at anything Atlantean. But so far, all of them have been ready to share as much knowledge as they can. For free. Is the pleasure of sharing their work really enough for them?

“Man, I’m not disappointed,” Sam chuckles, high-fiving T’Challa. Steve wonders when they became such friends. Maybe yesterday, when he was off with Bucky. And to think Sam is the one teasing him about going on dates…

Nat is still watching the engineers work, and she asks, soft but confident, “This a prototype?”

A laugh slips out of T’Challa’s mouth. “Nothing gets past you, uh?” He takes a piece of paper from one of the working benches, and shows them a few quickly drawn sketches, looking somewhat like a swordfish. “We’ll see whether or not it ends up working out in a few weeks. Shuri and I designed it a couple of months ago, but she’s already moved on to other projects, so I’m the only one left to do the dirty work.”

Sam did mention Shuri was some sort of genius engineer. For a second, a flash of his past life, of Stark’s lab, flashes before Steve’s eyes. It’s a sweet memory – even though Peggy fired at him that day – but the edge is piercing, and the loss of the shield makes it even more bitter.

“Where is she, by the way?” Sam asks, obviously eager to go and talk to the biggest brain he’s encountered in months, years maybe.

T’Challa points behind him. “Upstairs, in the lab with all the other big heads. They all have their own working space. Hers is the second one on the right. Can’t miss it.”

And he’s right. They can’t really miss it. First, because all sorts of lights seem to be flashing behind the paneling of her workspace, soft sounds clashing with the ever-present ring of electronics, and second, because there’s a huge “Shuri” painted in blue on the wall.

Sam knocks onto the concrete, and clears his throat. “Shuri? You there?”

“Come in!”

So they do. They find her not in the entrance, where all sorts of machines are buzzing about, but in a smaller room, just as cluttered, behind. Steve, though, doesn’t really get the time to take in the details around him. His eyes immediately zero in on the other person in the room with Shuri. Namely, Bucky.

“Guys, hey!” He greets, nodding at Steve with a small smile and waving his right hand. His left arm is currently pinned to Shuri’s table, where she seems to be tweaking it with an army of screwdrivers and wrenches, plus a hefty dose of crystal, given the blue glow all over Bucky’s arm.

“Hello Bucky,” Natasha says, her eyes following Steve’s to the metallic arm. “If you’re busy Shuri, we can come back later,” she offers, as much to give Shuri time to work as to give Bucky privacy, Steve thinks.

“I’ll be done in a minute, you can wait for me in the entrance if you want!”

Sam and Nat backtrack, but Steve has a moment of hesitation. He shuffles on his feet, looking again at Bucky, who’s looking straight back at him. Steve freezes.

“Didn’t think I’d see you again so soon,” Bucky says, and is that maybe a blush creeping on his cheeks? It makes Steve straighten a bit, embarrassed of his fidgeting.

“Neither did I, but I’m glad.”

Shuri grumbles something unintelligible, which makes Bucky fire a dark look at her, but then she’s pushing a stool in Steve’s direction, and telling him that “If he wants to stay and have a chat with her project, he might as well sit.”

Steve obeys. Bucky laughs. “Don’t worry. She acts grumpy, but she’s just a soft kid in that little heart of hers.”

Shuri tightens a screw, and Bucky winces. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not there,” she grumbles. “Plus, without THIS kid, you wouldn’t have an arm to do all of your silly, dangerous animal handling work, so give me a break.”

Steve watches the exchange with raised eyebrows. Slowly, he turns to Bucky. There’s scar tissue on his shoulder, connecting to the metallic material that reminds him of the ketak, and what he’s learned since then was the Leviathan. Steve thought the arm might just be plating over the actual flesh, some sort of protection. But given Shuri’s words…

Gently, he asks, “What happened?”

In the silence, he wonders if he’s pushed too far. Shuri pretends she’s too busy fixing the plates to take part in the conversation, but Bucky is drumming his right hand’s fingers on his thigh and worrying his lip.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t…”

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Bucky cuts him before he can finish. “It’s just that… it’s kinda stupid.” It takes a few seconds more, and then he sighs, shakes his head, and gets on with it. “Ten years ago, I was out with some of my patients, some little ones, close to the cliff. I wanted to test out the flight of some of them. They were doing great, you know, and I was laughing, not paying attention to anything. And Goh-yah was just a baby back then.”

Steve isn’t sure where this is going, so he listens in silence, trying to remind himself that a ten-year younger Bucky would probably have looked just the same as he did now. It’s such a strange notion, the not aging. Even him, at some point, will be old and frumpy. No serum can push away the boundaries of life for eternity. Not like this crystal can, anyway.

“He was so happy to see me he charged ahead without caring for our surroundings. I told you, they can be a bit dumb, these ones,” another wince, as Shuri pushes her crystal against the rift between two metallic plates, close to his shoulder. “Anyway. I was right in front of the cliff. And if I ducked, Goh-yah wouldn’t be able to stop. So I planted my feet, and I caught him.”

From the corner of his eye, Steve can see Shuri shaking her head. Silently judging Bucky. To be fair, his decision wasn’t the smartest. But Steve understands it.

“Even though he wasn’t as big as now… he was still strong, that twit. Pushed me the last few feet to the very edge of the cliff. And I fell.” Bucky’s face is somber when he recounts it, the pain probably still as fresh in his memory as if it were yesterday. Wounds haunt you like that. Visible or not.

“I was lucky I survived, to be honest. But my arm… my arm was close as dead. But hey, we have a REALLY good engineer down here,” he says, winking at Shuri.

A cough. Foreign. “Aren’t you forgetting someone?” The voice is masculine. American. Steve turns to find a man in the doorway. He isn’t very tall, or very muscly. More wiry. But there is something to him. A presence. Maybe it’s the smirk on his pale face, the perfectly shaped goatee, or just the utter confidence he exudes in each of his steps. There’s something familiar about him, but Steve can’t quite pinpoint what it is.

Bucky smirks, so he must know him. “Ho, I don’t know, who might that be?”

The other man sighs, and comes to fold his arms on the back of Bucky’s chair, inspecting Shuri’s work. “You’re an ungrateful brat.”

“Technically, I’m older than you,” Bucky retorts.

He doesn’t look it. Bucky is in his late twenties, just like Steve. He probably left Brooklyn merely months before the whole Captain America debacle. Might even have been in the army for a while. But that man looks like he’s in his late thirties. There’s just the slightest patch of white at his temples, and the smallest hint of wrinkle at the corner of his eyes, something a normal human wouldn’t even notice, but that Steve’s eyes catch.

“Whatever,” the man scoffs, waving his hand. “How is your arm doing?” He tries to grab for him, but Shuri swats the hand away with a growl and a low Atlantean curse. The man pouts.

It’s only when she’s completely done that she lets him have his fun, looking like the man annoys her, even though there’s a somewhat fond glint in her eye.

The man pushes Bucky’s arm in every other direction, taps on it a few times, gets some kind of weird glasses out that he puts on to examine the work. When he’s done, he nods, and turns to Shuri. “Perfect work, as always,” he smiles.

Though she tries to hide it, Steve can tell Shuri is flattered. “Thanks, Tony.”

It’s then that the man – Tony, apparently – turns to Steve, acting as if he’d just noticed him.

“Oh, hello there,” he extends his hand, a smirk on his face. “I’m Tony. Tony Stark. I’m the engineer who helped Shuri design Bucky’s arm.”

Steve blinks. And it clicks. The familiarity. The way the man talks, the man moves. _His face, dammit._

In a rush, the words barely above a whisper, he says, “You’re Howard’s son.”

A step back. Widened eyes. Tony’s looking at him like he’s just been slapped. At the door, from the corner of his eye, Steve can see Nat and Sam, obviously curious as to what is going on.

“How…” Realization dawns on Tony’s face. He takes another look at Steve, more than a glance this time. A sweeping motion, starting with his face and moving to the rest of his body. “You’re Captain America.” His voice is filled with awe. Disbelief.

Steve nods.

“You knew my dad,” Tony whispers, voice cracking. Steve feels like there is a whole history to unpack there. A lot of things left unsaid. But Steve never knew Howard had a son. Never knew he even got married. And yet here Tony stands. Like his father, but somehow so much more.

And it took journeying to the bottom of the earth, to a lost city, to meet him.

“I guess this explains what the shield was doing in that car, holy shit,” Tony mumbles, suddenly back to himself.

At that, Steve jumps, “You’ve seen the shield?”

Tony blinks. “Have I SEEN it? Of course I’ve seen it, it’s in my… oh.” He pauses. Shakes his head. Laughs manically. “Oh shit. Here I thought I’d taken it back from like… thieves or something. Holy shit. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re the one who stole it.” It’s not a question. Steve is up now, arms crossed over his chest, a scowl on his lips. Here he’d been, running around, growing mad with worry for the shield, and someone had, in fact, stolen it. Howard’s son. He still can’t quite believe it.

“Trust me, if I’d known it belonged to you, I wouldn’t have touched it.”

“Good. Now I want it back.”

The others are watching the exchange unfold, oscillating between worry and confusion. Nat, Sam and Bucky seem to finally catch on to what is happening, at least some parts of it, but Shuri is completely in the dark.

Tony shakes his head. “Of course you would,” he starts walking, cussing under his breath, massaging his eyes, “Dammit, I’m such an idiot.”

“So, he has your shield then?”

The voice is so close, so unexpected, that Steve startles. It doesn’t happen to him often. Bucky must know, because when Steve turns to him, he’s smirking.

“Apparently,” Steve replies, trying not to think about the ghost of Bucky’s breath on his neck, standing so very close to him, or about the heat of his torso, most of it bare but for crisscrossing fabric. It had been easy enough to ignore when Shuri was working on his arm and Bucky was talking to him, but now… Steve gulps. He needs to get his head out of the gutter, dammit.

This is what decades of not being laid does to someone.

“The shield is in my lab,” Tony interrupts Steve’s train of thought, and he’s actually thankful for it. “Under a complex protocol of safety measures. I’ll take you to it.”

And with that, the man is gone, speed-walking to the other side of the building, followed by Steve, Bucky, Nat, Sam, and a very confused Shuri.

“What’s happening?” she asks in a whisper, looking at everyone expectantly. She doesn’t seem to like being kept in the dark. Thankfully, Sam updates her with a quick summary of the events, and then she’s blinking both at Tony and at Steve. “An _indestructible shield_?” she squeals, and Steve can nearly see her vibrate out of her skin in excitement. He winces. He really, REALLY doesn’t want the shield to become some lab curiosity. He just wants it back. Sooner, rather than later.

Tony’s lab is a mess. Where Shuri’s had been a bit clustered, but overall organized, his is overflowing with schematics, half-finished projects, and downright bizarre stuff, like a brew in a mug that looks like it’s at least a week old, if not more. Steve suddenly feels far less optimistic about getting his shield back in one piece.

The schematics, though. Sam has stopped beside them, and they give even Steve pause. There are drawings, hundreds of them, of modern tech – robots, mostly, though there are the occasional vehicles here and there – and, with them, Atlantean counterparts. Detailed sketches of the crystal, and what it has produced so far, with notes strewn around in a handwriting so messy Steve can’t seem to decipher it. Research. Research everywhere.

Banner would be impressed. Hell, Fury would pay _very_ good money to get this man back to the surface. Steve isn’t surprised the Atlantean approached him.

Tony is fidgeting with buttons and levers against a wall, still mumbling to himself. When he takes out the crystal from around his neck to use it, Steve can’t help but notice that a glow lingers under his shirt. Above his heart. His eyebrows pull together, but before a question can form in his brain, Tony shakes his fist in the air triumphantly.

“Haha! Got it.”

A trap door opens, revealing a safe. And inside it, the shield.

Tony takes it out gently. Reverently even. And then his eyes land on Steve. “Here you go.”

Steve takes hold of his shield just as carefully. The weight of it between his fingers instantly settles something in his aching heart. And then he can’t resist. He turns it around, and, in one swift motion, pushes it on his forearm, strapping it on.

There’s a pleasant hum in his head at the feeling of the metal on the back of his hand, the leather strap in his palm. A soothing balm on his worried mind, a comforting blanket wrapped around his shoulders. The shield is here. The shield is fine. The shield is his.

Silence, in the room. When Steve raises his gaze from his weapon, his companion, he finds everyone looking at him, with different levels of admiration, confusion, or fascination. With a cough, he pulls himself back together. “Thank you,” he tells Tony, and means it.

“No, thank _you_.” Tony is adamant, and Steve knows that even though he must genuinely think it, there is a part of him that breaks at the idea of separating himself from the shield. Steve wants to ask about this history. About what happened to Howard, and why there’s a strong melancholy on Tony’s face, as his gaze settles on the shield one last time.

Someone claps in their hands, and everyone turns. Nat smiles, happy to have gotten everyone’s attention. “Okay, now that this mystery is taken care of, can we go and eat something? I’m starving.”

That gets a laugh out of everyone, and though Shuri and Tony both excuse themselves, saying they’re too busy to eat outside, Bucky agrees to join them.

They find Ayo again, waiting amongst the machines, chatting with another Atlantean. She steps behind them without a word, only a raised eyebrow and a half-smile when she sees Steve carrying the shield. He’s suddenly very annoyed not to have his harness with him. Hefting it around until they’re back to the house is going to be a pain, no matter how glad he is to have it back.

The smell of the food in the restaurant they settle in is absolutely exquisite. Steve isn’t even sure he can call it a restaurant. It looks more like a street food stall, with small islands of cushions and carpets all around, and people enjoying meals among them. The atmosphere is filled with the emanations of cooking meat, and the laughter of the islanders. Something in Steve heart shuffles and warms. This feels like family.

Settling on cushions, Ayo and Bucky order for them. And then they wait.

Which apparently makes it official question time.

“So, you and Tony are both from the surface, right?” Nat asks, eyeing Bucky with curiosity.

“Yup,” he replies, popping the “p”. “Different period though. He’s a recent arrival and I’m… well, less recent, though still new given Atlantean’s standards of aging.” Ayo laughs at that. Steve wonders how old she must be.

“I didn’t think Atlantis took in people… well, people like us.”

Bucky shakes his head. “They didn’t, for a time. Not until Milo came. Then it took another decade, for Atlantis to build itself back up from its ruins, and for him to convince everyone to let foreigners in, and a couple of them out.”

“You mean there are Atlanteans on the surface?” Steve asks, incredulous.

Their food comes then, the cook serving them with a “Bon Appétit” that makes all of them laugh. There’s a lull in the conversation, long enough for everyone to dig into their plate and savor the food – truly delicious – before Bucky replies.

“A few, yes. They don’t stay long up there, but a lot are curious to see what the outside looks like. And some are scouting for new people to bring back down here.”

Sam stops eating, turns to Bucky. “How do they choose them?”

Everyone seems enraptured in the conversation. Even Ayo, though she must know the answers. She watches over them with the gaze of a mother proudly witnessing her children learn.

“I’m not familiar with the exact process. Mostly they try to recruit great assets for the development of Atlantis. Great minds, like Tony, or great cooks, artisans,…”

“Why did they recruit you?”

Steve can tell Nat’s question is too intrusive the moment she asks it. Bucky tenses, stops talking, stops eating. It takes him seconds only to unwind, but the damage is already done. He just shakes his head, and attempts a smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Sorry,” Nat whispers with a wince.

Everyone goes back to their plate, and the end of the meal passes in awkward silence. Thankfully, the tables around them make ample noise to cover it up, and by the time they’re done, the air doesn’t feel as heavy as before. They thank the cook, Bucky pausing for a minute to discuss something in Atlantean with him.

Seeing him eye the conversation, Ayo quickly translates. “The cook breeds his own livestock for the meat. Bucky helps with the birth and sick animals, and he’s just asking about some of his most recent cases. Apparently, everyone is doing fine.”

It seems like it, by the blinding smile on Bucky’s face as he bids the man farewell. Steve has to quell the twist in his gut at the idea of that same smile being directed at him. He doesn’t even understand _why_. Sure, Bucky is nice. Caring. Funny. Smart. Badass. Mouthwateringly good looking. And, to not spoil anything, from Steve’s time. But still. Steve shakes himself. He needs to get his priorities straight. Even when his thoughts are not.

Navigating the close quarters of the city center with the shield in hand is tricky. He has to make sure not to slap anyone with it, testing his reflexes like they haven’t been for a while, the streets bustling with people. He nearly trips on a stall in his rush to avoid a child running straight for the bottom of the shield, and he apologizes multiple times – and in multiple languages, Atlantean included thanks to Ayo – for disrupting the vendor even for a second.

When, finally, they arrive in an area that isn’t swarming with people, he sighs in relief.

He hears laughs, and finds his friends and Bucky making fun of him. He doesn’t comment, just rolls his eyes, and keeps walking, even though there’s a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

Bucky hails them, a minute later.

“That’s where I leave you,” he tells them, gesturing to his aktirak stationed in the shrubbery.

Something sinks in Steve’s stomach. He ignores it. He’s already thankful for the time they’ve had. All the things he discovered today. The people he met. The shield he got back. He has no right to crave more, no matter how much his brain screams for it.

“See you around man,” Sam says as Nat nods with a smile.

“Sure thing.”

They’re all turning. Going back to the house. Steve doesn’t know what to say. He gets ready to follow, a goodbye on the tip of his lips, when his name makes him shudder.

“Steve?”

He looks up. Bucky is standing closer, looking as unsure as Steve feels.

“I’m glad you got the shield back,” he says, not really looking at Steve. Eyeing the red and blue circles, and white star in the middle of it.

“I’m glad, too.” In his whisper, Steve doesn’t just mean about the shield. He isn’t sure Bucky catches on to it, though.

Silence settles for a second more, and Steve can just imagine Nat and Sam growing restless, a few feet away. But honestly? He really doesn’t care.

Finally, Bucky seems to settle. He takes a deep breath, and his cold blue eyes pierce right through Steve’s soul. “I was wondering if maybe you’d be up for a romp tomorrow morning?”

“A romp?”

Bucky winks, and Steve nearly comes undone. “A romp,” he reiterates. “I’m not telling you what or where. Exactly. You’ll see.”

Steve is curious, now. Plus, as long as it involves Bucky, he knows he has no reason to be worried. So he nods.

“Great! I’ll send someone to get you tomorrow morning.”

Suddenly, Steve isn’t so sure about it. Sending someone? He doesn’t want to say it out loud, doesn’t want Bucky to think him an idiot, but the way he’d phrased it… well, Steve had kind of hoped for a date. But before he can ask about it, Bucky is already going for his aktirak and waving him goodbye.

“Don’t take too much with you. And plan another set of clothing.”

Now Steve is just utterly confused. Plan another set of clothing? What for?

But Bucky is already gone, so Steve will just have to trust him, and wait for whatever tomorrow will bring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony!!! In my preliminary notes, there was a little bullet point list of characters, divided in "Surface" and "Atlanteans". And Tony was listed in the Atlanteans category, with a question mark beside his name. I wasn't sure I would have the time, or opportunity, to weave him into this story.  
> And then Tony Stark did a very Tony Stark thing, saw the perfect opportunity, and pushed himself at the forefront of my mind like "Hello there, it's MY TURN now!"  
> So yeah. You guys get Tony.
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> As always, more stuff coming tomorrow ~


	5. Dip in the big bath

True to Bucky’s word, someone comes for Steve, early the next morning. Or more like “something”.

He’s woken by a familiar growl outside. And when he opens his eyes, still caky with sleep, and looks out the window, he sees the huge fanged dog, sitting in front of the house. Waiting for him. Steve laughs to himself at the weirdness of it. He should have expected something like that, especially from Bucky.

He gets dressed quickly, making sure to make as little noise as possible to not wake Sam, and, remembering Bucky’s words from yesterday, packs another set of cloth in a bag that he pushes over his shoulder. Downstairs, only Okoye is waiting. Steve realizes he hasn’t warned any of their guards of the invitation, and he winces. He hopes it’ll be alright.

“Hello, Okoye.”

“Steve,” she greets him with a nod, sitting on the stairs, overlooking the river and the other houses.

He doesn’t know why, but his gut clenches. He feels fifteen again, with a flutter in his stomach as he asks his mom if he can go to the cinema with all the other kids, and she looks at him with those sad, sad eyes. She doesn’t want to say no. But she has to. For his health.

But Okoye’s eyes aren’t sad, and Steve is a big boy now. “I’m supposed to meet with Bucky,” he says, trying to sound as affirmative as he can, without challenging her. “I hope that’s okay.”

For a moment, there is only silence. She doesn’t even raise her gaze to look at him, and he worries that is a dismissal in itself. It stretches a few seconds more, and Steve is growing restless, when finally, the corner of her mouth tugs in a smile. “Of course, lover boy. Bucky told me about it. And I saw the beast,” she adds, eyes crinkling in amusement. “Now run to him.”

If asked, Steve will deny that a blush crept so high on his cheeks he must have looked like a tomato.

The creature hears him come, and turns to him. It looks intimidating still, but it greets Steve with a loll of its tongue and a snap of its jaw that looks friendly enough, so he decides to take a risk, and scratches it on the side of its face, right above its highest left eye.

The creature’s eyes close, and a low growl vibrates out of its jaws.

“Bawteb,” Steve murmurs.

He lets himself be guided through the shrubbery. He expects an aktirak or a ketak, stationed away from the houses, with Bucky waiting from him. It never shows. Steve wonders, belatedly, if this is some sort of test. Does he have to cross the whole island on foot to prove he’s worthy, before he can get to his date?

The word “date” echoes through his brain, and Steve finds himself flushing again, without anyone to notice. He hasn’t dated in _years_. Hell, the last person he felt confident enough to ask on a _dance_ was Peggy. And then… well, then History happened.

Of course, he’s seen how things go in the modern world. Nat – and Sam, once he reached their circle of friends – has tried to set him up with women, then men, when she realized he was still a bloody blushing virgin. And Steve has watched porn. He isn’t a saint, and the internet has a few benefits.

And yet here he stands. On his way to Bucky, to a maybe date, maybe not.

Bucky is from the thirties as well. Steve doesn’t even know whether or not he went back to the surface in the last ten years. If he’s aware of the bustling activity up there. Of the fact that, even though no one really applied to the moral code of their days, now things move so much faster. For the better, and for the worse.

Steve isn’t sure he can do faster. Gods, he’s barely kissed what, three people? It’s never gone farther than that. Whatever Bucky expects from him, Steve is pretty sure he’s going to make a fool of himself.

Throughout his musings, he follows the beast, taking him through more residential areas, until they meet the forest, sounds both muffled and amplified amidst the trees and animals roving the land. He slowly comes to at the reverberating sound of water. Not the flow of the river, or the crash of a cascade – though he can make that out, in the distance – but the slow lap of waves on a shore. One last tree, and the vision fills his eyes.

It’s a small lake, nestled in the middle of the vegetation. There is a cascade, as he’d heard, farther away, half hidden behind trees and rock. All around the shore, flowers grow in patches, vibrant and smelling like paradise. Birds and insects fly around, some perched on the outcroppings that tower amongst the bushes, remainders of the past glory of Atlantis.

And, a few paces away, Bucky waits.

“Finally,” he exclaims, greeting his beast with scratches, and Steve with a blinding smile.

Steve drops his bag, too hard maybe, because Bucky throws him a surprised look. “It’s beautiful,” he replies, his gaze moving from piece to piece, trying to commit everything to memory. Not that he has to worry much about that. The serum does it for him.

With a nod, Bucky follows his gaze. “Yeah. I come here every other morning. It’s always so peaceful. Too far from the city for kids to venture around much, and there are better spots for the teenagers in search of an adrenaline rush.” He’s fond when he says the words, and Steve is ready to bet he was one of these teenagers, when he was still up there.

He lets himself appreciate the view a few minutes more – and he doesn’t just mean the lake – before he breaks the comfortable silence. “So, what about that romp you promised me?”

Bucky smirks. “Eager, are we?” he retorts with a wink, and Steve gulps. He’s so screwed.

And then, like that, Bucky starts stripping. He pulls his top off effortlessly, revealing toned abs and a muscled back, and Steve just… freezes. _Error 404_. He stares with his jaw on the floor, and only snaps it back up when Bucky turns to him with a smirk, hands on his hips, shoes and pouches discarded somewhere in the distance, only his weird leggings and the crystal around his neck left on his skin.

He catches Steve staring, he has to. And yet it doesn’t seem to bother him. He even stretches a little, and Steve isn’t THAT dumb, okay. He understands that Bucky is showing off. He just can’t make sense of the images his brain is receiving right now.

“Let’s go swimming,” Bucky taunts.

He’s off, running and diving into the lake with the grace of a practiced man before Steve can retort. He emerges a few feet from the shore, laughing, his wet hair unfolding from his usually neat man-bun.

“Come on, bahod-mok, get in!”

Whatever that word is, Steve is pretty sure he’s making fun of him. He splutters, pulls his own shirt and pants off, leaving him in only his underwear. He immediately feels self-conscious. He knows he has nothing to be ashamed of, but… well, it’s been a while since he has undressed in front of anybody. And it’s the first time he does it in front of anybody that counts.

Though, when he catches Bucky’s eyes on him, burning with a fire he doesn’t even bother concealing, Steve suddenly feels much more at ease. He takes the few steps separating him from the water, and hops in.

It’s warm in there. Not as much as the temperature outside, and the shift toward somewhat colder is welcome, but still, far warmer than he’d expected it to be. Though, since they are on an island surrounded by lava, he guesses he shouldn’t be surprised.

Bucky is waiting for him, tranquilly paddling a few feet away, watching Steve make his way through the lake. He’s walking until he isn’t anymore, the ground giving way under his feet, and there’s the millisecond of panic, of not remember how to swim, of viscerally hating the water, before his rational thoughts come back to him and quell his heart. Though, given the expression on Bucky’s face, he caught a glimpse.

“You ok?” he doesn’t wait for a reply, just swims closer and takes a long look at Steve. “Maybe I should have asked you that before you got in there. I just like swimming so much, I thought it’d be a good idea.”

“It’s fine,” Steve reassures him, as gently as he can, before Bucky can work himself up. “Water and I haven’t always had the best of relationships but… as long as you don’t stray too far away, I’ll be fine.”

He should feel embarrassed by his words, but he really doesn’t want to take them back. Especially when they get him another sparkling smile from Bucky.

“Trust me, I’ll swim to the rescue whenever you need me.”

Steve laughs. “Thanks.”

“How long can you hold your breath?”

The change of pace is strange, but Steve decides to roll with it. He shrugs, makes a small wave of water curl around him and slap Bucky on the shoulder gently. “Long. Minutes,” he replies, thinking back to the Leviathan, a shiver running up his spine.

Before he can sink back into the memory, a touch jolts him out of his head. Bucky has grasped his hand, the contact of the metal a bit foreign and yet gentle on Steve’s skin. “Good. I’ve got something to show you.”

Bucky dives, taking Steve with him.

At first, everything is just a blur of water and bubbles around them. Steve blinks a few times, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He lets Bucky lead him around until they’re grazing the bottom of the lake. There’s barely any light down there, except for the one coming off both their crystals, painting their faces blue. The glow gives Bucky an almost ethereal feel, encompassing his strong jaw and plush lips, and Steve finds himself staring once again.

Until Bucky shakes his hand to get his attention, and points at something on the floor.

Eggs, Steve realizes. Round shaped, around the size of an ostrich’s, purple colored. One of them shakes, and Steve blinks. They’re close to hatching. He wonders what animal lies inside.

As if to answer his question, a shape descends in front of them, making Bucky twitch around in excitement, pointing repeatedly at it. From afar, it looks like a turtle. But when he truly focuses, Steve can see it has the clawed feet and fur of a mammal. He doesn’t get a good look at its face though, Bucky tugging his arm again, back to the surface.

They emerge with a gasp, Bucky’s laugh short of breath but exquisite. “I hadn’t seen one of them in a while,” he explains, still giggling, pushing wet strands of hair out of his face.

He shakes his head, sending water flying everywhere, some – most – of it into Steve’s face.

“Hey!” Steve protests. With a laugh of his own, he splashes some right back at Bucky.

It starts an all-out war between them, the lake their battlefield, as they run and laugh and tumble each other into the water, Steve relishing every contact of their skin, every playful look.

“Race you to the other side?” he asks Bucky in a breath, exhilarated. Without waiting for an answer, he launches.

He expects to lose Bucky easily. Though the man is built, Steve is slightly taller, and he has the serum working for him. And yet. Bucky keeps up. So well that Steve gets distracted by it, and, in the end, he loses, Bucky’s hand reaching the other shore before his.

“Damn, you’re good,” he pants with a shake of his head.

Bucky gratifies him with another smirk.

This side of the lake somehow seems… wilder. Less traveled. There are more stones lying around both in the grass and in the water, and Steve takes a good look at some of them, his fingers trailing the inscriptions on the side of what must have been a pillar.

“Everything is so beautiful here,” he whispers in a rush. “No wonder you stayed.”

Silence. When he turns, Bucky his looking at the sky, pensive. He only lowers his gaze to Steve’s after a few seconds, and Steve can’t quite decipher what he sees in the blue depths. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to.

“It’s not always easy, you know. Sometimes I want to go back up there. See the world, discover what it holds. What has changed. What hasn’t. And I have gone back there, for a few days. But it hurts too much.” His voice wavers. He curls on himself.

Steve pushes on his arms to sit on the shore, right next to Bucky. And waits. He can feel that something sits heavy on Bucky’s chest, that there is a confession he’s trying to make. He just isn’t sure what it is.

It takes a minute for Bucky to unfold, for his breathing to soothe. His eyes are traveling all over the lake and its shore, never quite focusing on anything. He gulps. “I was in the army, you know?” Bucky chuckles softly, a sound so dark and lonely it breaks Steve’s heart a little. “I mean you probably were, too.”

He wasn’t, at first. He wants to tell Bucky, wants to share his past with him, like he has rarely wanted to do with anyone else. Only Sam and Nat know of the deepest hours of his life. And Peggy. But Peggy sits in a hospital bed, far away. Half the time, she isn’t even sure whether he’s real or not.

His story will have to wait for another day. Right now, only Bucky matters.

“I was happy to serve. Proud, too. Not that I wasn’t having fun in Brooklyn, with the girls,” he throws a glance Steve’s way. Steve looks back placidly. Inside, though, his heart beats at a hundred miles per hour. And then Bucky adds, in a rush “and the boys too,” and Steve’s heartbeat both stops and skyrockets.

“And it wasn’t just fooling around,” Bucky pushes on, as if he hadn’t just shattered Steve’s brain in half with a simple sentence, with two little words. “I was working. Had hobbies. Science, man. That Stark exposition? Never seen anything quite like it. You can understand my hype when I met Tony. Probably scared him off with all my babbling the first time.” There’s a small smile on his face. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but it’s there. Something to hold onto.

“But then war rolled up and I… we had to do our jobs,” his blue gaze connects with Steve’s again, and Steve nods, just to make sure that Bucky knows that he’s listening. That he’s interested in whatever he has to say. Whatever he needs to get off his chest.

“The army, though. Well, it wasn’t the army in itself, was it?” His laugh is bitter, cutting straight to Steve’s bones. “But the war,” his voice is but a whisper now, his gaze lost, years beyond, stuck in the past. “The war does things to people. I still remember the screams. The wounds. The stench.”

A long pause. Bucky’s breath is uneven again, his gaze blurry, and slowly, very slowly, making sure to not spook him, Steve moves closer, bumping his shoulder against Bucky’s. Hoping to give him strength through the contact. To fight off some of the nightmares, some of the shadows that haunt his dreams as well. Because Steve cannot forget. The serum made sure of that. Every image engraved in his mind. And he knows he didn’t see the worst of the trenches. Not like Bucky. Not like so many other unlucky soldiers.

“At least I survived, you know,” Bucky’s laugh is nearly hysterical now, his throat closing up, his voice jagged, sharp with the edge of madness and sadness. “I have no right to complain.”

This, Steve thinks, is when he has to step in. “Just because you didn’t lose your life then doesn’t mean you didn’t lose a bit of yourself, Bucky,” he whispers, as gentle as if talking to a startled beast, ready to lash out. “The term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder exists for a reason. We may not be able to see your wounds on the outside. It doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

Silence, again. Bucky shakes his head, wipes a tear away from his cheek. Sniffles. Thanks Steve in a whisper.

“I wanted to kill myself. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. At some point, some very, very low point, I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

The admission echoes through their surroundings, heavy in the silence.

“But I got lucky. Again. Because I wasn’t alone. Because, somehow, in the midst of this godforsaken war, I had made a friend. An Atlantean.”

Steve blinks. Turns back to Bucky, to stare at him. But the man is dead serious. “I know, I know, it doesn’t make sense.” Bucky shakes his head, as if he still can’t quite believe it himself, decades later. “He was a healer. And when he heard from the war, he volunteered to go up and help. Became a great medic. Met him when I got a nasty cold during our first winter. And after that, helped him in the sick bay every moment I could,” he muses. Those memories don’t seem as tainted, and Steve understands, then, where Bucky’s passion for healing may be coming from.

“Until I couldn’t. Until the days blurred together and my mind felt constantly trapped into the same sluggish paste of darkness.”

Bucky crosses his arms around himself. Even though it’s hot out there, he’s shivering. Steve suddenly wishes his backpack wasn’t on the other side of the lake, so he could draw his linen shirt and wrap it around Bucky’s shoulders. A small comfort.

“I was a sniper. Was really good with a rifle. It also meant I didn’t come as close to death as others might have. Death felt impersonal. It was just a matter of pulling the trigger, and boom, done.” A gulp. A pause. “But sometimes, it wasn’t that easy. Sometimes, I had to go into the fray. I had to deal the sentence so much closer. Those days were the worst.”

Tentatively, Bucky’s hand reaches for Steve’s. Without hesitation, Steve holds it out, lets him take it, lace their fingers. He holds on. He holds on as tight as he can, tighter than he would usually dare. It seems to ground Bucky somewhat.

“Yasekim found me during one of those days. Found me rolled in a ball under my cot, a knife at my throat, and my hand trembling like crazy.”

Just like he’s trembling now. His whole body shakes with the tremors, with the memories never buried.

“He pulled me up. Got the blade out of my hand. And he smiled at me. And then, he told me about Atlantis.” The breath leaves Bucky at once, like he’s passed the worst of it all. And he has. Steve can sense the calm settle on Bucky, ever so slowly. His breathing is still ragged, but he isn’t shaking as much as before. And, in his gaze, there’s a flicker of determination that wasn’t there before.

“Told me everything. I thought he was a lunatic, at first. But then he showed me the crystal. Used it to cure a burn on my skin from one of my bullet casing that had ricocheted on the back of my hand. Like it was natural. Like he hadn’t just performed magic.” He’s playing with his own pendant now, fidgeting with the cord, crystal bouncing on his naked skin.

“I still don’t understand why he chose me. What he saw in me. He just wouldn’t tell. Only sent me away, saying he’d take care of everything. Leaving me with a telegraph for a fisherman halfway across the world. He probably feigned my death. It’s not like I was leaving anyone but him behind, anyway.”

The crystal’s glow intensifies, briefly, blinding Steve. When he opens his eyes, Bucky is holding it to his own face, examining it, as if to decipher the meaning from the world from its very depth.

“That’s his, you know. He told me he didn’t need it anymore. That he’d fallen in love on the battlefield, and he planned on finishing his days there. Said I needed it more than he did.”

A broken sob. “I only learned what the crystal did, other than heal, when I came here. It devastated me. I asked Milo and Queen Kida to send someone back up there, to give Yasekim another crystal. To get him out of there. But they wouldn’t. Said he’d made his choice.” After a while, he adds. “And they were right. He had.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers, his head against Bucky’s shoulder. He knows that kind of loss. He knows the feeling acutely, and he wishes he could make Bucky understand just how similar they are. How he, too, has invisible wounds the war left him with. But now isn’t the time. Instead, he keeps on listening. Because Bucky isn’t done.

“It’s alright. I’ve made peace with it,” Bucky says, a small smile on his lips.

He takes another deep breath. Dives back into the past. “Getting to Atlantis wasn’t easy. I don’t know how I even managed it, in my state. Maybe the dream of such a fantasy world was all I needed to motivate me. When I got it here, though… when I got here, I broke down. I was just a shell. I’m still surprised Queen Kida didn’t kick me out.”

“She must have seen in you the same thing Yasekim had,” Steve tries, his words unsure but ringing true.

“A disaster of a man in great need of saving?” Bucky jokes, a bitter twist at the end of his question.

“That, maybe. But also someone with potential for greatness. You said so yourself. That’s how they choose. And they were right about you.”

The blush that creeps around Bucky’s cheeks is a discreet thing, but Steve catches it, from the corner of his eye. For a moment, he worries Bucky will deny it, and Steve will have to fight him about it. But thankfully, no argument arises.

“It took me months. Years, to rebuild myself. But deep inside, I still had that thirst, that thing that had pushed me to go to Stark’s exposition, to collect books. And here, everything was knowledge. Every person was a well of information, every monument a chapter dedicated to history or science. Everything in Atlantis screamed my name. Pulled me in. And at some point, the island captured my soul.” He says it with a smile, more genuine than his previous smiles, and something warms in Steve’s chest.

“Becoming a vet came pretty naturally after that. I was a good healer, and I liked it, but they already had enough people to take care of the humans, and honestly? I wasn’t up for dealing with people all day long. But then I saw my first wounded beast – a lava dog, limping around, whining for someone to help her even though she was all alone, far from the shore of the lava river. And then I just knew. I knew what I needed to do.”

“I’m sure that lava dog was thankful.”

“She was. Stayed with me for the remainder of her life, while I built this place, and started helping more animals. The beasts on the island don’t all live very long lives. And none are immortals as we are. But every interaction with them is a blessing, so I try to make every second count.”

The silence settles again around them. Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. The atmosphere sits heavy with Bucky’s confession, and he feels like trying to lighten the mood would be a failed attempt, just as sharing his own past right now would be in poor taste. So he just watches over the lake, the wind blowing waves around its surface, as the rush of the cascade not too far away blurs his thoughts.

“Race you back?” Bucky suddenly asks. By the time Steve has his eyes open, Bucky’s already pushing through the water at great speed, and he follows, eager to leave some of the tension behind him.

They make it to the shore at the same time, Bucky laughing as Steve touches the earth only half a second before him. “Guess that’s a tie,” he says, smiling again. Steve feels relieved.

Neither of them feels like staying in the water much longer, so they both dry and dress themselves, Bucky hiding in the bushes as he changes out of his soaked leggings. Steve has to make a conscious effort not to try and peek at him between the branches.

They’re making their way back to what Steve supposes is Bucky’s aktirak, parked somewhere, when he finally gathers enough courage to talk again.

“Bucky?” he hails, soft. Bucky turns immediately, raises his eyebrow at him in a silent question, stopped in his tracks. “Thank you. For trusting me with your story,” Steve says, reaching out for Bucky’s arm on instinct, giving it a squeeze.

Bucky shrugs, like it’s no big deal. He seems to take a step closer to Steve unconsciously, and the heat of his body radiates against Steve’s skin. “Thank _you_ ,” he insists, a very tiny smile on his lips. “For listening to me. It means a lot.”

To say that at this moment, Steve gets lost into Bucky’s eyes would be a euphemism. There is so much happening in the ocean of his pupils, a maelstrom of emotions dancing in their depth. Gratitude, vulnerability, courage, strength, desire. Everything and nothing at once, and Steve’s head turns with it. With the promise he can see reflected in them.

Steve doesn’t realize he’s leaning forward at first, not until he can’t focus on Bucky’s eyes anymore, and he has to recalibrate, directly on his mouth, still glistening with the shine of the water droplets. They’re about to kiss. They’re about to…

A beeping sound, in his ear. Steve wrenches himself away from Bucky belatedly, cursing at his earpiece. But he does tap it.

“What is it?” he growls. He knows it isn’t a very courteous greeting, but he can’t muster the strength for one right now.

“Rogers.”

This isn’t Bruce’s voice. It is, in fact, probably the worst voice Steve could’ve heard right now.

“Fury,” he whispers.

“We have a problem.” Fury’s voice is as urgent as Steve as ever heard it, only a small hitch in his pronunciation pattern ticking him of. But it’s enough to drive Steve on edge.

“What kind?”

There’s a pause on the other side, as if Fury himself is reluctant to voice it out. It only serves to exacerbate Steve’s worry more. And Bucky is watching him, eyes wide, expression questioning. Like he can feel that something is wrong.

“The kind that starts with “H” and ends with “A””.

_HYDRA_. Steve’s breath shortens. He must pale, because now Bucky is looking at him with worry clear on his face. Or maybe it’s the panic that’s climbing up Steve’s throat, fighting to make its way out, that gives it away.

He has to shake himself away from the spiral of dark thoughts assaulting his mind. The memories of Red Skull, of the war, of the dead people he’d left behind. Red Skull is dead. That’s the only thing he’s sure of.

To say he’s surprised that HYDRA was reborn – or maybe never truly died with its leader – would be a lie. Steve isn’t naive. The world is a dark and twisted place, often cruel, and the joke isn’t lost on him that, wherever he is, HYDRA seems to want to follow him.

“Rogers, are you there?” Fury asks. His patience is probably thinning, and he doesn’t have much to begin with.

“I am,” Steve stutters back. He runs his hand through his hair in a nervous gesture, starts pacing. “What’s happening, exactly?”

“I’ll explain the full story when we have time. But right now we don’t. SHIELD has been compromised, and, unfortunately, so did our communication network.”

He doesn’t have to spell it out for Steve. It’s all very clear.

Dread descends on him like the weight of the world. His worst nightmares are coming true. “They know.”

“They do. They intercepted Bruce’s report to me. They already have a team under way. I needed to warm you, so you’d be ready to welcome them.”

Steve snickers. Ready to welcome them my ass. HYDRA will come armed to the teeth, with dozens of soldiers. The Atlantean seem to barely have anything but a few lances. It will be a massacre.

“Cap.” The terseness in Fury’s voice makes him jump back, ready for a garde-à-vous. “I trust you on this. You and your team. You’re part of our elite fighters. You’re _superheroes_ for fuck’s sake. There’s nothing HYDRA can do to you.”

Red. All Steve sees is red. He’s mad at Fury, for pretending like this is just a normal mission. Like people won’t die. Like the heart of the very organization that’s supposed to protect millions wasn’t gangrened for the past few years, if not decades. But mostly, he’s mad at himself. Mad for accepting the mission, mad that he told Banner, mad that he didn’t insist Bruce kept silent about this. Mad that he will be the very reason for Atlantis’s second downfall.

“There are civilians here, Fury. Cultural treasures like you can’t imagine. I can’t protect them all. WE can’t,” he insists, dejected.

“You can,” Fury counters. “And you will. Now get your ass ready for battle.”

With a sigh, Steve gives up. Arguing with Fury is futile. “How much time do we have?”

“Not enough.”

And, on those words, Fury hangs up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Bahod-Mok" is an endearment that roughly translates as "Tiger"
> 
> "Yasekim" is short for "Yasekimgagesu", a name derived from the word Yasek, meaning “Noble of heart”
> 
> (Thanks again to Loeily for their amazing translations!)
> 
> -
> 
> Oh no! A cliffhanger... but hey, at least I finally gave you Bucky's backstory, right?
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> Tomorrow, well... sh*t is going down!


	6. Demons

He doesn’t utter a word about this to Bucky as he makes his way back to the city. Even though Bucky keeps asking. Keeps throwing him concerned glances. He just asks for Nat and Sam to rally back at the palace as soon as possible, telling them it’s urgent.

They’re already there when he gets to the main square. Waiting anxiously.

“What’s happening?” Sam asks.

With a glance at Steve, Natasha replies, “Trouble.” And she’s right.

They climb the steps at high speed, Okoye and Bucky trailing behind them in a confused state. They don’t even have to ask for an audience with the queen. The moment the guards see them, their faces dark and closed off, they call for her and her husband.

When she arrives, Steve’s first step is to fall to one knee, head hung low, and to apologize. “Queen Kidagakash. I am so very sorry.”

“Rise,” he hears, the powerful voice reverberating through the hall. “And speak, Steve Rogers.”

“I have just been informed that an army is making its way down from the surface as we speak. Aiming for Atlantis.”

To her credit, Queen Kida doesn’t budge. Doesn’t even appear surprised. She just appraises him, and then asks, slowly. “Yours?”

Steve shakes his head. “The enemy. An organization called HYDRA. They did get their information through our failings, though. I would like to apologize again, even if it will make little difference.”

“What are their intentions?” Still, she ignores his apologies.

“I cannot say. Though their goals, as far as I’ve known them, were always nefarious. They are power hungry men, and I fear what they will try to do once they see the magnificence that your island holds.”

The queen stays silent for a while, contemplating his explanations. Milo is beside her, looking worried, but with a fierce set to his jaw. They exchange a few words, and then Kida addresses one of the guards in Atlantean. He turns, marching away in a rush.

“Is there anything else you can tell us?”

Ashamed, Steve shakes his head. He doesn’t dare to raise his eyes, to meet hers. To see the revulsion in them, the judgment. They trusted them enough to welcome them in their ranks, introduce them to their culture. And Steve is about to destroy everything. Just because he was greedy enough to want to stay.

“Be at peace, soldier.”

Kida’s voice is much gentler, and that, out of everything, is what makes Steve stare back at her. A soft smile plays on her lips, though concern dances on her face.

“Do not blame yourself. You were honest with us, from the very beginning. We took that chance. We don’t regret it.” And then, with more vehemence, her head held high. “People have tried to attack us, to steal from us before. They never succeeded. We’re strong, stronger now even than we were when those happened. I’m not scared. And neither should you be.”

Strangely, her speech does lift Steve’s spirits, even just a bit.

An alarm rings out, the sound echoing throughout the island. Outside, Steve can already hear the people running around, though he is surprised by the lack of screams of panic. Instead, everything seems to happen with a military precision. Order.

Steps, behind him. He turns to find Ayo, Shuri, T’Challa, a few other people he doesn’t recognize. And Tony.

Kida gives her orders in Atlantean. None of them seem to even flinch at the announcement of war. Instead, everything shifts into gear like a melody written on sheet paper. Rehearsed again and again to perfection. Everyone leaves, to get to their respective posts. Milo entrusts their daughter to one of the guards and comes to stand beside his wife and queen.

Only Steve, Nat, Sam, and Bucky are left.

“Will you fight with us?” Kida asks, and this time, she’s holding her breath.

Steve starts to nod, but already, his friends are agreeing. Are pledging their strength and their weapons to this cause. Something proud swells in his chest at the sight of them, ready to do what’s right, ready to stand by him.

“Then go, and prepare yourselves. Meet us back at the main bridge as soon as you can.” And after a pause to make sure they understood her. “That means you, too, Bucky, if you want to.”

Bucky’s smirk is wicked. “Like I would pass up an occasion to shove my foot up someone’s ass.” But Steve knows that, even though he tries to appear brave, the same images of war plague his mind. Images he is about to relive for the first time in forever.

*

Putting on his uniform feels harder than it ever has in his life, and it isn’t just because of the humidity. Where usually, it settles on his shoulders comfortably, nearly reassuringly, today it feels like the weight of the whole world. He straps himself in all the same. Fastens each buckle, puts on his leather gloves and leather boots, ignoring that he will burn up the moment he steps outside under the artificial sun.

The shield is on his bed. Reflecting the lights coming from the window, sending hundreds of colored beam dancing on the walls. A vision of beauty. And then Steve snatches it up and slides his arm through the holdings. He’s ready.

Downstairs, Sam has his wings folded behind his back, and Nat has her darts hidden under the sleeves of her shirt, and her batons strapped at her hips. They all wear the same grim expression, the same downturn of the lips, the same shadow of guilt in their eyes. “This is madness,” Sam whispers as they exit. Steve agrees with him.

It is madness. But they can’t back out now. Steve doesn’t _want_ to. He has a responsibility to these people, and to himself. There are so many great things to protect here. So much joy. So much knowledge. So many strange creatures and plants. A whole world, closer to paradise than anywhere he’s been before. And, his heart whispers, ever the traitor, there’s Bucky too.

Bucky, who’s waiting anxiously near the bridge when they meet again. He’s wearing more covering clothes than he was earlier. It looks like light armor, maybe made of some creature’s leather, straps running around his torso, knives sheathed, for now. And at his side, there’s the fanged dog. It is a restless beast, turning in a circle around its master, mouth open on a growl Steve can’t hear.

It isn’t the only creature, either. There are the crabs he’d noticed when he first got here, gigantic beasts with riders on their back, their pincers armored as well. Some of the green birds are circling ahead, and more of the fanged dogs roam around, as well as other animals he’s never seen, looking just as lethal. A few lava dogs aren’t straying too far away from the shore, their jaw set and their gaze murderous. And down, down down down in the midst of the lava, Steve can see the shapes of the whales, growing restless.

This is going to be a mess.

“Steve,” Bucky hails him. But Steve can’t face him. Can’t look him in the eye knowing he’s the cause of all this. Of the death that’s about to befall this island.

He chooses instead to focus on Queen Kida, and Milo beside her. They’ve just arrived, the crowds parting to let them pass. She looks magnificent, an emblematic warrior queen, armored, her expression closed off but for the soft gaze she throws every which way to some friends. Milo trails her, trying to appear just as determined, just as strong, but Steve can see the agitation behind his eyes. The same one that prowls through his very bones.

With a deep breath, he turns, and looks straight ahead, at the main entrance.

As if on cue, an explosion rings out. It shakes the very core of the island, something massive, but far away still. HYDRA is on their way.

“Move out,” Kida orders, repeating it in Atlantean as well. The soldiers scatter, a huge chunk moving toward the bridge, others staying on the island to protect the city. Ketaks zoom past, the huge carp-like flying engines buzzing with barely contained energy. The troops are moving.

Steve readies himself to join them, exchanging glances with Nat and Sam to make sure they’re all in agreement, when another voice interrupts them.

“Captain!”

He turns to find Stark, in the swordfish-like device Steve had seen the plans of only a couple of days ago. It seems like an eternity already. The engineer isn’t alone, Shuri and T’Challa beside him. All of them are heavily armored, gadgets that seem to belong more to the upper world in their hands. All of them vibrating with the blue energy of the crystal. With what Steve guesses must be Atlantis’ very life force.

“You’ve suited up. Good,” Stark comments, eyeing him up and down. He also takes a look at Sam, eyeing the contraption on his back with furrowed eyebrows, though he doesn’t say more. “You’re coming with me.”

“What…” Steve is about to protest, but Tony doesn’t even listen to him. He waves his hand in the air, looking around, and then points at the swordfish.

“Climb in. You’ll be able to survey the battle from above, and then I’ll drop you where you need to go. Trust me.” The last part is said with earnest eyes, and Steve doesn’t feel like denying him. He’ll take all the help he can get for this. He’s going to need every last drop of it.

Shuri is motioning for the back of her swordfish as well, T’challa already seated behind her but a third place available. Nat climbs in in a swift motion, checking her gear. Tony’s eyes fall on Sam.

With a shake of his head and a lilt of his lips, Sam declines. “No thanks. I’d rather use my own transport right now.” He pushes a button, melodramatic as ever, and takes a leap as his wings spread, glorious, shining things reflecting the blue light of the huge spiraling orb above them.

Tony’s jaw drops on the floor for all of two seconds. Then it snaps back shut, and Steve can already see him planning to steal Sam’s wings to study and then reproduce them. In that way, he reminds him very much of his father.

Embarking on the swordfish, Steve feels like he’s in the pod again, a tiny blubbering human-being trying to achieve something. To be someone. He isn’t sure he has ever succeeded, no matter what others will tell him. But today, he hopes he can make a difference.

“Barnes!” To Steve’s surprise, Bucky turns at Tony’s call. So Barnes is his surname then. It feels like it should ring a bell, like somehow Bucky might have been his neighbor, close enough for him to touch. But he knows that, if that were the case, the serum would be there to remind him. Right now, it’s just making him imagine things.

“There’s one for you as well.” Tony points to another swordfish, hiding behind theirs, and a wavering smile appears on Bucky’s lips.

Powering the machines up makes their beaks turn a light shade of blue, fluorescent lights casting them in their glow. And then Tony moves.

Those things are fast. Faster than an aktirak, and definitely faster than a ketak. They cut through the air without any resistance, and Steve feels like he’s on his motorcycle again, wind blowing in his hair. Free. And then he remembers why he’s here, and reality comes crashing back on his shoulders, making his heart skip a beat.

They’re flying so fast they pass the lava gorge in a blur, so fast Steve can barely catch a glance of the bridge retreating into the island, leaving no trace of its existence, and no means for anyone on foot to cross. Steve feels lighter for it.

They pass a series of small caves, until, finally, they reach the huge cavern where they’d met Bucky for the first time. Atlantis is so close still. But the enemy is already here.

Soldiers. A lot of them. Steve quickly counts their heads, rounding the figures to about fifty highly equipped, highly trained warriors. Assassins and mercenaries. He somehow expects them to be wearing the HYDRA colors, the angry red skull and tentacles to stare back at him, but they’re wearing inconspicuous uniforms. Bulletproof vests. Helmets. Assault weapons. Everything to reduce a city to silence, and pillage it for their own gain.

There is one face, though. One of the men that isn’t wearing a helmet, proudly flaunting a cocky smile. And Steve knows him. Dammit, Steve worked with him. And he never suspected a thing.

“Rumlow,” he groans, low, staring at the man leading the expedition. Hoping, suddenly, that looks can kill.

Sam is flying close by, and comes to the same conclusion Steve just did. He swears. “Of course that asshole had to be a HYDRA agent. Who else,” he sighs, taking a spin to avoid a stalactite.

Close behind, Steve hears Nat crack her knuckles, her stinging bracelets activating with a zing. “Gosh, I’ll finally be able to achieve my long-lost dream of kicking that douche in the nuts. Get that smile to drop off his face.” Steve must admit the perspective sounds divine.

The moment the first Atlantean soldier gets into firing range, Rumlow raises and lowers his arm. A rain of bullets comes crashing down on them all at once. Steve barely has time to hold up the shield to protect himself and Tony, and he feels his heart accelerate, thinking of everyone that doesn’t have the cover of indestructible metal. But it seems there’s no need to worry. All around him, the Atlantean have activated shields, blue rounded things framing them, spilling out of bracelets and pulsing as they deflect each and every bullet. Not one of the first assault touches their intended target. Not even the fanged dogs, who jumped out of the way and behind rocks right before the rifles took aim.

The first succeeding strike doesn’t come from a human, actually. It comes from one of the green pterodactyl-like creatures, as one of them descends from the shadows of the ceiling onto the back of HYDRA’s small army, and plummets straight for one of the mercenaries. Talons first, it goes straight for the helmet, and underneath it, the man’s face. His screams echo throughout the whole cave, sending a chill down Steve’s spine. And then shots get fired at the creature, and he winces as it collapses with one last shriek. His heart breaks. He imagines Bucky’s, probably weeping for the animal’s life, not far behind.

There’s a suspended second of silence, of impending doom, as both armies walk to each other. And then they clash, creating a maelstrom of sound, lights, and smell.

The ketaks fire first, an array of lightning zipping through the cave, striking man after man after man. Some of them fall. Don’t get up. But most dodge the random outbursts, and just keep on running for the foot soldiers, whose shields seem to be quickly running out of energy.

A bullet zooms past Steve, only a few inches away from his face, and he winces as Tony makes them take a spin. “Sorry!” he exclaims, righting the engine, powering up different buttons, the crystal moving through his hand at high speed. Another second, and the swordfish is dipping down, a straight beam coming out of its elongated nose. Straight for one of the men down there.

One burst of energy. That’s all it takes.

There’s something that never sat quite right with Steve on dealing death from afar. He couldn’t have been a sniper, like Bucky. For him, it has to be up close and personal. He has to feel the fight, the strain of his muscles, see the face of the man he is about to put down. It’s something that has to do with respect, he thinks. Pride, maybe. Something that strums through his veins, and makes him ask Tony to drop him off, wherever he can.

Tony complies. Or at least tries to. But every time he makes for a landing, no matter how protected he tries to make it, one of the HYDRA agents spots them, and fires. The same shield the warriors are equipped with may cover them, but it doesn’t cover the whole machine. And metal can only hold for so long.

“Dammit,” Tony rages after another missed landing. “Sorry, Cap.”

Steve is barely listening. He’s already passed one leg over the side of the swordfish, and it only takes a second or two for the perfect opportunity to present itself. He’s low enough. He jumps.

He can hear a couple of distinct screams in the background as he falls. Tony, surprised and inconvenienced to have suddenly lost his passenger. Bucky, terrified Steve is about to kill himself. Instead, Steve simply tucks himself as best as he can with the shield facing the ground, and he waits.

The impact rings through every single one of his bones. Weren’t he infused with the serum, each and every one of them would probably have broken. As it is, the shield was enough to cushion his fall, and he quickly scrambles up, his senses in disarray but his body otherwise uninjured.

One of the HYDRA agents means to use it to his advantage, his gaze fixated on Steve as he rights himself, gun raised, but before he can fire, legs lock around his neck. A second later, and he has fallen, jaw at a weird angle, Natasha wiping her hands together with a satisfied smile.

“Be careful, Rogers,” she teases with a wolfish smile. “Or someone will get you before I do.”

He huffs. And then he starts fighting.

The soldiers recognize him. It isn’t hard to see they weren’t warned of his presence – or that of the Black Widow and the Falcon either – because with every glance at the shield, he sees their eyes widen, and their resolve falter, if only for a second. But every time it turns to only be a fleeting feeling. Steve sighs.

Someone knocks into him from behind. They turn at the same time. He hears the cock of a gun, the shuffle of someone taking aim. Steve doesn’t hesitate. He slams his shield full force into the man’s front, sends him sprawling back. It isn’t enough to knock him out, the soldier using a rock to settle himself with a groan, but it gives Steve time to regroup, take a look at the man’s face, no longer hidden through the broken visor of his helmet. He aims. He sends the shield. It spins on itself at high speed, and lodges right in the side of the man’s face. A surgical throw, the weapon colliding with the exposed part of the man’s temple. This shot does knock him out cold. It even ricochets straight into another soldier, hurtling against his back, destabilizing him enough for an Atlantean soldier to spear him through the shoulder with gritted teeth. There’s nothing pleasant about the scene. But something in Steve’s blood settles.

It goes on for a while. Only minutes, probably, stretching to an eternity in Steve’s mind, as he flies between soldiers, falling one after the other, Nat never straying far, Sam coming down every so often to slam his feet into an agent’s sternum, bouncing back up in the middle of the ketaks. It looks like they might be winning, after all. And with close to no casualties, except a few of the creatures who grow reckless enough to get themselves killed.

But the Atlantean’s shields aren’t infinite. Some of them start to waver and Steve stares, transfixed, as a bullet doesn’t ricochet off the surface of one, and instead pierces through the flesh of a soldier’s arm. Another immediately rushes to help them, using his crystal to heal the wound, guiding them to safety. All around, the blue bubbles start to pop. And HYDRA soldiers notice. At least those that aren’t knocked out cold, or simply dead.

They renew their assault with new energy, forcing the Atlanteans back. Steve stays put as long as he can, alternates between throwing the shield around and using it to deflect bullets, but they’re starting to swarm him. In the end, it’s Nat who drags him away, back where they came from, grunting about how he’s a _reckless sonofabitch_ and would be dead by now if it weren’t for her.

Lowering his shield to watch the scene unfold, he catches a glimpse of Rumlow, smirk still etched on his face. Steve’s fists curl in an irrepressible wish to punch him. He won’t use the shield for Rumlow. He’ll destroy him with his bare hands.

As they retreat, getting out of the main cave and into the tunnels, Steve hears Kida ordering men around. He had seen her rapidly in the battle, a lava dog at her side, Milo behind her on their own swordfish, ruthlessly falling the enemies. Now he can see panic in her eyes, but a determination, still overwhelming. She points to the mouth of another cave, and some men jog there. Steve doesn’t understand why, not until the mercenaries are back into view, so set on the Atlantis and the army that bars their way that they don’t notice the gaping mouth of darkness behind them.

The attack never comes. Before the queen can give the order, detonations ring out around them, an echo of the ones that had alerted them to HYDRA’s presence earlier. But this time they’re close. Too close. Rocks fall behind their enemies, a deadly rain that blocks out all exits except for the one leading to the island. They’re trapped. And so are the men who were supposed to ambush the soldiers.

Steve can feel desperation growing among the ranks by the minute. It only gets worse when more dynamite explodes, making other lumps of boulder come off the ceilings. Straight for the flying ketaks and swordfish. Some of them get slammed to the ground, taking their riders with them. Others, like Tony, manage to evade the projectiles at the last second. Everything around them blurs. And then Steve’s gaze snaps into focus, and his heart misses a beat. He can’t see Bucky anymore.

He plants his feet. Stops his retreat. Frantically, he searches the roof of the cavern and the fallen debris, for one of the rare swordfish machines. Only Tony, Shuri and Kida and Milo are still afloat. Bucky’s is nowhere to be found.

A howl. Steve turns to find a fanged dog, _Bucky’s_ fanged dog, raging against a pile of gravel. Okoye runs to him. Starts excavating whoever is under. Steve’s stomach plummets. He sprints to them, avoiding a couple of bullets flying his way with a leap, ignoring the jeers of the HYDRA agents making fun of him for running away. His brain only has one mode left, and its circling around the same word over and over again. _Bucky Bucky Bucky Bucky._

Okoye salutes him grimly when he reaches her. He gets to work immediately, helped by the creature. It doesn’t take much before he catches the reflection of metal under the rocks. A couple more seconds of effort, and Bucky’s whole arm is out. A minute later, and Steve has unearthed him.

Bucky is covered in dust and bruises. His forehead bleeds, his armor is torn, but his lips are opened on a breath. Feeble. Delicate. But it’s there. It’s enough for Steve to hope.

Another volley of bullets scatters around him, and he uses both the monticule of rocks and the shield to protect everyone. When he glances back at the field, he realizes they’re nearly locked in their positions. They’re against a wall, and what’s left of HYDRA’s army is slowly but surely going to pass them, enclosing Steve, Okoye and an unconscious Bucky behind their lines, ready for slaughter.

He has to try, though. If at least he can get Bucky back to the others, into their healing hands, it’ll be fine. Steve has seen his share of battle. He can handle a few bullet wounds. And if worse comes to worse… well, at least he’ll have done something good for the sake of the Atlanteans.

Hefting Bucky into his arms bridal style, he takes one last breath. Holds it in. And then, as he releases it, he runs.

He can hear the gallop of the fanged dog behind him, and the quick steps of Okoye. She pushes to his left in one sweep motion, facing the mercenaries that are nearly upon them, disarming the first one with her spear, running the other through straight in the heart, her teeth bared and expression frenzied. Steve quickly loses sight of her. He has to focus on his own problems anyway, when a couple of soldiers aim straight at him. He gets ready to duck and roll, curdling Bucky’s unconscious body closer to his chest to protect him, but before he can do anything, the beast launches itself at one of the soldiers, and rips his throat out. The other falls just as quickly, seizing. Beside him, Nat clutches her fighting sticks in a vice-like grip.

“Come on, move,” she instructs, sweat prickling at her brow at they quickly make their way back to their side of this war. She gives Steve a once-over, her gaze stopping on Bucky, a pained expression fleeting in her eyes before she regains her composure, and dives back into the fight.

Sam lands beside him with a heavy shudder. “Want me to take him?” he asks, breathless.

Steve hesitates. Sam could take Bucky back faster than Steve ever could, but if anything went wrong, if he was shot down during flight… he’d crash, and Bucky would likely die in the process. Steve can’t risk it. So he shakes his head, thanks Sam for the offer, and jogs the last dozens of feet separating him from the retreating silhouettes of the Atlantean soldiers.

Light shines, straight ahead. Steve winces. He knows what that means. He knows that the sound of water cascading and lava bubbling getting closer and closer means they’re losing. Losing ground, losing the fight, losing Atlantis. And they’re losing quickly.

They emerge on the promontory Steve and his friends had stopped on to admire the view on their first day. It suddenly feels very small, with a couple dozens of Atlantean warriors stepping on it, ketaks and swordfishes buzzing around in an angry swarm, and at least twenty HYDRA agents left, and looking like they’re nowhere near giving up.

They can take them. Steve _knows_ they can still win. They just have to stay united, stay motivated. Regroup and swarm them. But everyone around him is feeling wary, and his arms are still weighed with Bucky’s unmoving body, the blood forming a dripping crown on his forehead, soiling Steve’s uniform. Despair slowly creeps up his spine.

One of the machines slows down and lands beside him. In its cockpit, there is Tony, disheveled and tensed, no smile left on his lips as he takes in Steve and who he carries.

“I’ll get him to safety. Put him in the back.”

Steve is still reluctant to let go. He can feel Bucky’s heart beating so slowly against his chest, and his mind is telling him that he must protect, must do everything. But the rational part of his brain knows this is for the best. Steve can’t cross to the island. Can’t swim through the lava. Tony can. And will. So he pushes his anguish down with an iron fist, and gathers Bucky in the backseat of Tony’s machine.

“Be safe,” he murmurs, looking at Tony but meaning it for Bucky as well.

Tony nods. And with that, he’s off, a couple of bullets bouncing back from the metallic tail of his swordfish as he zooms through the air, straight for the heart of the island.

The island, which is shining with an eerie glow. Something in the atmosphere weighs on Steve shoulders, and he realizes that the orb casting the city in its light is spinning faster, its blue shade turning darker with each passing second. He doesn’t get the time to admire it any longer though. Another soldier is upon him.

The shield is back in his hand with one swift motion. He knocks the man’s teeth out of his mouth and uses his hand to cut off the soldier’s air supply. He chokes for a second, and then falls in a heap on the floor, making the earth tremble. Dead. Or soon to be. Steve feels no remorse as he watches him one last time. Only cold anger, simmering through his veins, threatening to burst and swallow him whole. This is his fault. This is his doing. And he’ll go to the grave defending these people against HYDRA. He won’t allow them to do what they did to him back then. Won’t allow, won’t allow, won’t allow.

He turns, rage making his fist tremble. Zeroes in on the closest mercenary. Lifts his shield, ready to slam it into the man’s head.

“Stop!” the word rings, not only because it’s screamed by a booming voice, but because there’s a threatening detonation following it.

Steve freezes. All around him, gasps of surprise ring out. He turns to the source of the noise.

And finds Rumlow, his gun against Milo’s temple. Milo, who is trying to fight him off, but is still, no matter how old, scrawny more than he is muscular. He can’t do anything against Rumlow. He’s like a fly caught in a spider’s web.

The world around them stops. No one dares even breathe. There are only twelve HYDRA agents left, looking like they’ve gone through Hell. Looking like they’re ready to give up, but can’t. But no Atlantean can do anything about it. Not when their queen’s husband is in Rumlow’s clutches, and death a trigger away.

“Now. If you’ll be so kind as to let us cross to your city,” Rumlow purrs, a wicked smile on his lips. “Or I’ll blow this little fella’s brains out.”

Every gaze turns to Kida. The Queen. But though her head is held high, there is no more mask of pride hiding the horror and despair swarming her eyes. It is a plain thing, easy for anyone to see.

Milo shakes his head. Silently implores her not to act on it. And Kida is torn. Steve can tell. Torn between her loyalty, her responsibility to her people, and the love she has for her husband. For the man who saved that very island.

And Steve understands. Because he had to make the choice. Between country and love. Between duty and selfishness. But at least then it had been his life on the line. Not Peggy’s. He had made his choice knowing full well what would have happened to him, and he hadn’t regretted one second of it.

He tries to imagine the role reversed. Tries to imagine it isn’t Milo at the end of Rumlow’s gun, but Peggy. Or worse, Bucky. His heart clenches painfully as he realizes the feelings he’s been developing for the past couple of weeks are far stronger than he thought them to be. It hurts even more when he realizes any choice may have been taken from him, Bucky already close to death. It makes anger battle with sadness in his heart. And guilt, topping it all of. A living, breathing things, wrenching his gut until Steve feels like he might puke.

Time is still suspended. Glances are exchanged, Kida and Milo talking in silence, everyone standing still. He sees the exact moment truth befalls her. The moment she chooses her people’s and culture’s safety over the love of her life. Sees as Milo sags, relieved and yet scared. Steve gets ready for the gun to ring out once again.

It never does. Instead, there’s the ethereal dragging sound of metal moving, and, as Steve turns, he sees that the bridge is being drawn out. Without Kida’s orders.

Someone on the other side bypassed her authority, to save Milo.

Steve would be happy, delighted even for the queen, if the truth wasn’t a nightmare come true. As it is, he gulps, and sees with sudden clarity the end of Atlantis. Their resources stolen. Their people killed. All for the greed of a handful of people.

“Good,” Rumlow purrs, sickening. He pushes Milo back to his feet, still holding him close. “Let’s move.”

No one protests. Not even Kida, who starts walking with her arms raised. Everyone falls into formation, HYDRA agents on all sides. Steve makes sure not to stray too far away from Rumlow. He puts himself right behind him, ignoring the jeers and laughs the soldiers throw his way. Steve can take it. He probably deserves some of them. What hurts him the most is seeing Sam and Natasha subdued, watching them as their raise their hands, and drop their weapons.

Someone takes the shield from him. They have to pry it away from his grip, and it nearly plunges in the lava below, making Steve’s heart skip a beat. The shield may be virtually indestructible, but if it sinks in the molten fire, no one will be able to retrieve it. The perspective scares the shit out of him.

Ketaks zoom past, back to Atlantis, as their procession slowly crosses the bridge. Everyone is silent, the gun cocked against Milo’s head a permanent threat. None of them is willing to try anything funny, and risk the man’s life. The choice has been made now. Their fate decided.

The thought keeps circling back into Steve’s head, so much so that his surroundings blur. Unaware, he nearly misses the opportunity. Nearly. But his mind isn’t addled enough for his reflexes to subside. It only takes a moment of surprise. A fraction of a second. And everything shifts.

Down below, in the simmering lava, something moves. Jumps. The lava whale collides with the bridge, making it shake under her weight, throwing everyone into a flurry of movement. First, Steve sees Milo throw his head back, hears the sickening crack of a nose broken, Rumlow’s hold lessening enough for the man to slip through his fingers before he can retaliate, or even pull the trigger. Second, Steve moves. He turns on the man holding his shield, kicks him in the chin with a practiced spin. Catches the shield right before it slides off the metal, and into the abyss.

He rises. Aims. Throws. The shield meets with Rumlow’s hand a millisecond before he pulls the trigger on the queen, sending the firearm sprawling and disappearing into the lava. He breaks into a sprint, using his not inconsiderable mass to move the people around him, passing Nat who’s battling against an agent with her bare fists – and winning – with one goal in mind. One name in his brain.

The frenzy is sudden. Unexpected, almost. But there is so much unresolved frustration simmering under his skin, so much anger and hatred that he needs to evacuate before his mind turns him mad, that he lets himself unleash his full fury, like he never has before.

His fist collides with Rumlow’s gut with an impact sound so great it resonates around them. Mouth opened, eyes bulging, the man chokes. Takes a step back, wiping his lips from spit and blood.

He’s still smiling.

“So, Captain. Glad to meet you again. Can’t believe you lead us to this precious little treasure,” he whistles, acting casual, though his eyes shine as they land on their surroundings.

That’s the wrong thing to say. It only rises Steve’s hackles even more, makes his attack take a vicious turn. Steve has never favored it. He always prides himself with being a respectful and straightforward opponent. Bur for Rumlow, in this situation, he thinks he can make an exception.

He advances on him quickly. Rumlow is ready this time. He might not have his gun, but a blade has found its way into his palm, and his guard is up. Steve produces the shield from where he’d put it back on his back and slams it forward. It doesn’t do much, only destabilizes Rumlow. Under them, the bridge is shaking from all the struggles. Steve uses this opportunity to throw his leg out. It catches Rumlow right behind his left ankle. Steve tugs. Rumlow doesn’t fall. He holds on, the bridge’s rail clutched tight in his white knuckled grip. Steve has only a second to look at him before a blade is aimed at his hips. He deflects the blow easily, but another comes, for his head this time.

They alternate between blows and parries for a while. It’s probably only seconds, but time seems to stretch as Rumlow tries to break his defense, and Steve uses the environment to the best of his advantage, trying every tactic he can think of to win. He’s vaguely aware of the fights still going on behind him, screams and pained grunts and victory cries fading and rushing back in his ears every now and then.

It takes only a fragment of second. A moment of hesitation. Nothing, really. Just the sound of Sam yelling something he can’t even make out. But it’s enough to distract him. To miss Rumlow’s next offensive.

The blade plunges through his uniform with a crack, twisting, slowed by the high-density fabric. But not slowed enough. Rumlow is strong, strong enough that the movement drives the point of the blade straight into Steve’s skin and through his shoulder muscles. He barely registers the sting of it. He’s high on adrenaline now, and pain hasn’t meant anything to him in a while anyway. Just a chemical reaction. Just his body screaming in agony. Something easily ignored.

With the knife etched into him, Rumlow has nothing left to defend himself with. Steve knows this. Rumlow knows this. He turns, tries to run. It isn’t a very smart decision, but Steve doesn’t think that anyone confronted with a battle they can’t win would fault Rumlow for that. They’d probably all reach the same decision. And with it, the same end.

The shield flies straight for his shins. Rumlow’s body meets the bridge with a dull sound. Steve gets there before he can push himself back up, and turns him on his back, fire in his eyes, burning through his very soul.

“How dare you?” he spits. He thinks he might not be seeing quite straight anymore, wrath consuming him at the very idea that this man thought he could just come and pillage an entire civilization, only because he wanted to. Or someone ordered him to. Like it’s no big deal. Like it doesn’t matter.

“Did I offend you, princess?” Rumlow asks, using Steve’s wavering focus to slam back into him until Steve lets go of his collar. He stands, heaving and tired, blood dripping from his broken nose. But still, the smirk stays.

Maybe the smile is the last straw. Maybe Steve has just come unhinged, holding himself back back back every time, staying measured and respectable and making sure he’s a role model kids can look up to. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s hidden from the whole world, except his closest friends, and people he doesn’t know. Might never know. People who don’t care that he’s a celebrity, who won’t judge him for what he’s supposed to be, but what he really his. For whom only his acts matter. And this act, they won’t blame him for it.

He puts as much force into it as he can. Pushes Rumlow with his shield again, making him stumble backward, just where he wants him. And then he takes aim with his fist, the wound in his shoulder protesting, but not stopping him. And throws his punch.

His skin collides with Rumlow’s chin in another echoing crack, reminiscent of the one that broke his nose. But this punch is far stronger than Milo’s escape could have ever been. This punch has a purpose.

Rumlow stumbles again. Except this time, the rail is right behind him. Except this time, the synergy of the attack sends him sprawling backward and over it.

Steve watches in a blur, as if he’s looking at the scene through somebody else’s eyes. It’s in slow motion. Something straight out of a movie. Rumlow’s body slams into the rail, the force pushing him over it, his feet lifting from the ground, from the safety of the bridge. A turn. Steve can see his face again, his eyes widening as he realizes what’s happening. His hand shouting out, trying to grasp the rail, the bridge’s metallic floor. In vain. He falls. Down down down into the lava, without a sound if not for the blood curling scream that leaves his lips right as he hits it.

Silence. All around him, nothing, no one makes a sound. When Steve looks over, at where the fights were, where his companions stand, everyone is frozen. There are only a couple of HYDRA agents still up. They fall to their knees as soon as he looks at them, surrendering. In a daze, he watches as the Atlanteans bind their wrists. Watches as cries of victory echo on the bridge, and farther up on the island.

They’ve won. So why does he feel like a piece of his soul has shattered into a million pieces?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always love me a good battle scene! Sorry for the angst, though, I guess?
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> We're heading back to the surface starting tomorrow!


	7. Men out of time

The taste of victory is bittersweet. Steve regains his bearings fast, accepts the congratulations and the thanks. But something sours in his chest. Something Nat and Sam both seem to notice, though they don’t say a thing. They just check him for injuries, help withdraw the knife still planted in his shoulder, and apply pressure on the wound until it scabs over. Steve will need to get it checked out, but he knows it’ll barely leave a scar. It wouldn’t be his first. Probably won’t be his last.

Everything dissolves into a flurry of activity around him. Kida and Milo are carried around by their people, celebrated as heroes, as some soldiers push Steve, Nat and Sam in their path, as though they aren’t the reason this whole thing happened in the first place. Back on the main island, the injured form a small group around healers, crystals in hand. Someone offers to erase Steve’s gash. He declines. Somehow, he feels like he needs to keep it. It will be a reminder of what he is capable of. How dreadful he can be, his fury unleashed.

Unease creeps up his spine, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it. He’s being taken after the queen, back to the palace, a celebratory procession all around them, ketaks flying in overjoyed loops, animals prancing around. Above them, the red shine of the light source has faded back to its usual blue. The threat has passed. Milo and Kida exchange relieved glances.

Steve feels like he should be grateful, as well. The worse has been avoided. The enemy has been defeated, for now at least. No one will hurt the Atlanteans or their island. But thoughts keep spinning in his head, guilt overwhelming, something he can never seem to shake off.

Instead, he tries to focus on something else. He looks out into the crowd for a familiar face. He glimpses Ayo not too far away, but that’s it. No Shuri. No Tony. And definitely no Bucky. This only makes him more anxious.

He’s a mess of emotions by the time they reach the main square, and the steps to the palace. A hand falls on his shoulder. He exchanges a glance with Sam, whose smile says it all. Nat is on his other side, a quiet support. Steve suddenly feels very grateful for his friends. No matter what happens, they’ll never judge him.

He expects something official. Queen Kida turning to them with anger, banishing them out of her kingdom. Milo blaming them for his near-death experience. Instead Steve watches, transfixed, as the royals run to their daughter, falling to their knees, tears at the corner of their eyes, thanking the gods and their ancestors for reuniting them. Steve’s heart gives a painful squeeze. For a moment, an agonizingly long second, he thinks of his mom. Wishes she were here as well.

Hushed silence befalls the scene, the three of them awkwardly standing in a corner, giving the Atlanteans as much privacy as they can manage. Soon, Queen Kida is carrying their daughter back to her throne, talking to her in a soothing voice, the lilting Atlantean accent making something churn in Steve’s stomach. He can’t quite make out the words yet – he learns fast, but two weeks isn’t enough for him to become fluent in a language. He isn’t Nat. He does find himself wishing he had the time to truly experience it, time to understand those words and their meaning, and maybe stammer a few sentences as well.

Finally, Kida seems to notice them. It’s like she’s shaking out of a dream, the fog in her eyes clearing. Her expression is fleeting, alternating between bewilderment, pain, and peace. If only he as well could know that last one.

“Thank you,” the queen says in the end.

She opens her mouth for more, as Nat takes a step forward, shaking her head. “Please don’t.” She tries to appear collected, but Steve knows her like he knows very few people. He can see the minute tension in her jaw, the pain behind her hardened gaze. Nat feels the same way he does. Guilty. “We’re the reason this happened in the first place.”

“If anything, we should be the ones thanking you,” Steve adds, inclining his head in respect. “You’ve welcomed us, and we nearly got you wiped out,” his voice cracks. He coughs. Plants himself more firmly on the ground, taking reassurance in the weight of the shield at his back, the tightness of his uniform on his battered skin. He knows how to do this. He’s done this his whole life. Modeled himself to people’s expectations, fit into the mold of the perfect little soldier, and yet still staying true to himself. And if this time he has to lie a little, sugarcoat things so that at least the people around him aren’t hurt, then he’ll do it without an ounce of regret.

“We’re very thankful for the opportunity, and for your help and bravery during that assault. But we should go.” It pains him to even utter the words. Something makes him feel at peace, here. It isn’t just Bucky. Atlantis is magical, in a way, and Steve will miss it deeply. But he owes it to himself, and everyone he cares about, everyone he needs to protect, to do this.

“We’re taking those soldiers back up with us. We’ll make sure all evidence to your existence is wiped from our files, and the three of us will pretend this never happened.” He sees Sam and Nat tick beside him, barely. He knows this experience meant as much to them as it did to him. Knows Sam would have loved to discuss Atlantean technology with Bruce for hours, as Nat researched more on the Atlantean language and culture, cataloging everything they’d learned. And Steve? Well, he would have been content with just cherishing the memories of his time spent here. He might have even drawn it. Now, even a sketch seems like a forbidden thing.

Something on his chest pulses, and a memory swims at the surface of his mind. His hand instinctively comes to clutch at the crystal, hanging tight around his neck. Battling with himself, he stays silent for a long moment. And then he pulls it over his head, gives it one last, longing glance, and walks the few steps separating him from the throne.

He wants to kneel. It seems like the only proper way to offer the pendant back to Queen Kida and Milo, and his body is starting to feel the weight of the battle he just fought. But before he can even start to lower himself, Milo catches his hand, gazing at Steve’s open palm in wonder.

“You don’t have to, you know,” Milo whispers, as if he’s aware of everything it is costing Steve to rid himself of the very thing that brought him here.

The crystal is a danger. It would be a constant reminder, a proof, and a key. Too many factors that could bring back threats to Atlantis. Too many ideas that would pain him on a daily basis. Steve is strong. But he isn’t strong enough to face this.

“But I do,” he replies. He drops the crystal into Milo’s hands, and curls the man’s fingers over it. In his mind, he utters one last goodbye.

The queen and Milo watch them with pity in their eyes when they make their way back out. It only serves to drive Steve further into himself, away from the hurt he might feel if he allowed even an ounce of power to his brain’s macabre thoughts. Right now is not the time to overthink.

Sam sidles up to him with his warm presence, and Steve’s day gets a little bit brighter. “We’ll take care of the soldiers, and our stuff. Say our goodbyes as well. But I think you should go say yours now.”

Steve doesn’t understand, first, until Sam points at something with his chin. Someone.

Tony stands at the bottom of the stairs, looking far from the confident man Steve glimpsed during their previous encounters. His face is covered in what might be dirt, or something else entirely. Bags have grown under his eyes in hours. His shoulders are slumped, like someone who has given up on something.

Steve’s heart lodges at the back of his throat, and stays there all the way down the stairs, and as he walks to Tony.

“Glad to see you in one piece, Captain,” he greets, but it lacks its usual cheer.

“How is he?”

“Straight to the point, uh?” Tony sighs, shakes his head. “Come and see for yourself.”

He takes him to the lab, through the empty hangar and up the stairs, where all is eerily quiet now that no one is working anymore. There’s only the buzz of whatever instrument is still running, and a few whispers, echoing in the silence of the rooms.

Blue light stretches behind a couple of wooden panels. Steve recognizes Shuri and Okoye’s voice, exchanging in their dialect, worry transparent even through the language barrier.

They quiet once Steve comes around the corner. He immediately hates it. But he doesn’t remark on it, his gaze swallowed by the person lying down on a cot. Bucky is pale, paler than death maybe, his face twisted in pain, a blue halo around his head, Shuri’s crystal hovering over his wound.

“Still unconscious?” he asks, sliding closer, not daring to touch anything in case he might tamper with the healing process, but wanting to reach out, anyway. To cradle Bucky’s hand. Then he remembers this is his fault, remembers that he’s the very _cause_ of Bucky’s condition, and the want subdues. Disappears deep into the shadows of his brain.

Shuri’s face is grim as she nods. “At least he’s stabilized now. He lost a lot of blood. The blunt force of the trauma hit his head directly,” she says, wincing, moving around in a flurry of movements, schematics in one hand, medical equipment in the other. “I’ve been running diagnostics, but I won’t be able to know how the damage extends to his brain until he wakes up.” Then, in a hush, she adds, “If he does.”

A dagger plunges through Steve’s heart at her words. Bucky might not wake up. Bucky might be brain dead, and he’s the reason why. It’s enough to send all his careful crafted barriers tumbling down. The bubble is back in his throat, a prickle of tears at the corner of his eyes. He shakes his head to try to hide it, wipes a hand on his face. “I’m sorry,” he breathes. He doesn’t even know who he’s saying it to. Shuri? Tony? Bucky.

“You can’t blame yourself for this,” Tony admonishes, trying, no doubt, to be of help, to make Steve feel better about himself. “You didn’t know that would happen. You did everything you could.” But Steve isn’t one for pity. If anything, it only makes him want to lash out more. Instead he anchors himself on the pain of his fist clenching, and the floating light around Bucky’s head, at once soothing and nauseating.

“Except I didn’t. I, WE could have just left you alone, and this would never had happened.”

“You don’t know that,” Okoye tells him. She’s looking at him straight on, her gaze devoid of judgment, but devoid of pity or care as well. A neutral gaze. It helps Steve ground himself in the present.

Instead of arguing with her, he lets his eyes fall on Bucky again. “I’m guessing this is the best care he could get, right? Better than in an ICU?”

Shuri nods. On this, Steve trusts her. She knows exactly what she’s doing. If there is any chance Bucky might wake up, Steve is convinced it’ll be through Shuri’s and Tony’s combined efforts and expert hands.

He leaves the premises with a couple last goodbyes. He’s unable to look at Bucky when he finally turns around, and makes for the door. It hurts too much, he tells himself. He isn’t sure when it’ll stop hurting. Or if it ever will.

*

Dealing with the aftermath of HYDRA’s failed attempt at seizing power at SHIELD takes longer than expected. Steve barely sleeps in weeks, after getting back from Atlantis. At least the running around is a distraction from the thoughts that assault him every time he closes his eyes.

He sees Bucky’s face, most of the time. His smile. His carefree attitude. But there are other glimpses, as well. Cozy evenings, eating in their house with Ayo and Okoye. Visiting the market or the ruins. Watching the children run around, and their parents without a worry on their mind. At least he can pride himself with having made sure this will stay the same for eons to come.

They find a very busy Fury, back on the surface, laden with bullets but somehow still alive, Maria Hill looking ready to murder anyone that gets within ten feet of the man, or really anyone that talks back to him or her, and the whole of SHIELD operations corrupted in one way or another. So he puts his superhero missions on hold – no more saving people in distress, no more interviews or talk shows or evening spent painting and listening to music – and he does what he’s always done best.

He punishes the bad guys.

Rooting out the core of HYDRA isn’t an easy fit. It’s lots of planning, secret stake-outs, and more planning. But it’s a routine he’s glad to fall back into, one his body remembers like sheet music, all too happy to play along to the familiar tune. So he punches a few people, slams his shield into a couple of others, spends time strategizing with Maria, or making sure that Bruce is alright and someone hasn’t scared him into turning into the Hulk.

He gets shot a few times – scrapes that heal quickly, though the process isn’t as pain-free as Atlantean healing was – nearly gets blown up by an explosion, and has to put his morning runs with Sam on hold after one incident that left a colossal dent into one of Washington’s main squares.

It’s the usual, really. But somehow, it doesn’t feel the same.

He can tell something is missing, in his life. Something key. But he prefers not to dwell on it. Instead, he fills the void with other things. His job, mainly.

And once his job calms down – bad guys apprehended, SHIELD back in order, Fury smiling down at all the people scurrying around him – and he no longer has enough missions to fill it with, he opts for something else. Anything else. As long as it keeps his mind occupied, Steve isn’t picky. He draws the line only at getting asked out by anyone. Something painful churns in his chest every time he even thinks about his romantic life. He’s very much aware of the Bucky shaped cut-out in his heart, along with a couple of others, though, like most, he chooses to ignore it.

“You need to get laid,” Nat groans, during another night out into a random bar with him, Steve’s cap not obscuring his view enough to miss the way she rolls her eyes at him.

He chugs his glass back without a word.

“He hasn’t gotten laid in a hundred years, Romanoff, give him a break.”

Just because he’s right doesn’t mean Sam should _say_ those things. Steve makes it very clear with the glare he throws his way, but Sam only laughs and then gets up to go and dance his way through the crowd.

Steve wishes he could, as well. But aside from the fact that he gets recognized way too easily when he isn’t cornered in a dark booth in the back of the bar, there’s also the constant nausea that creeps up his throat every time someone so much as brushes against him. It’s a losing battle. Thankfully, Nat isn’t much for dancing either, except when she has a target in mind, so she keeps him company. Not always a nice one, though, given her latest sarcastic comments.

Tired, Steve exhales, and looks at her. “You know this doesn’t help, right?”

Nat’s jaw snaps shut immediately, her smile dropping. Instead she clenches her hand against the table, unable to meet his eye. “Sorry,” she mumbles. Steve knows it’s genuine because Natasha Romanoff never mumbles, never looks down with her shoulders bunched, unless she truly feels guilty. “I just… I just don’t know what to do,” she confesses in a whisper.

Steve doesn’t, either. He’s tried a lot of things, but so far none have worked.

“There’s nothing you can do. Unless you can erase my memories,” he jokes, but the very thought sends a thrill of alarm through his blood. Steve doesn’t forget. Ever. And the idea of such precious memories disappearing fills him with anguish. “And I’d rather you didn’t.”

Carefully, Nat slides to his side, and puts her hand around his shoulders. She’s so tiny compared to him she can barely stretch over his neck, but he compensates by leaning to the side, until his head rests on her.

“You know I’m here for you if you need me.”

“I do.” Then, after a beat of silence, “Thank you.”

He feels more than he hears her chuckle. “You’re welcome, big guy.”

*

Steve feels helpless. Lost, even. Meandering in this big new shiny world, that he never quite got used to, trying to carve a spot for himself where there isn’t. Where he isn’t sure he wants one.

That’s how he finds his steps taking him to the Smithsonian. He’s avoided the displays for a while, the memories always a painful reminder of all he’d fought for, and all he’d left behind. Too much, it says. Not enough.

The guard barely glances at him when he makes his way to the exhibit, frowning only because he’s wearing a cap indoor, but probably shrugging it off as some weird habit of a disturbed individual. Amongst the crowd – as thin as it is on a weekday with school – Steve is just another blurry face. He finds that most days, he quite likes it. It takes some of the pressure off. Means he doesn’t have to be careful about each and every one of his words or moves.

Seeing his old uniform feels almost surreal. It’s encased in glass, glaring lights shining around the faded whites and reds and blues. His old jacket is beside it, and Steve finds himself longing for its comfort, for the familiarity of it. But it’s nothing compared to the pictures. From the blurry ones of the howling commandos laughing around a bonfire over a joke Steve would never dare utter aloud, to Peggy’s crisp face, the legend reading “Peggy Carter, founder of SHIELD, and Captain America’s first love”. At least it doesn’t claim his first love is America, like some journalists seem inclined to.

He thinks about Peggy now, in her hospital bed. Thinks about the tears she’d shed upon seeing him again, unchanged. About the smile on her face, realizing it wasn’t a hallucination, but he was, in fact, still alive.

She’d talked for hours about her life. About being an SSR agent. Meeting Sousa, her husband. Her adventures with Stark – the father – and Jarvis, his butler. She’d seemed content. Happy, even. And suddenly Steve couldn’t even feel guilty about leaving her anymore. Her life had been so much better than he could have expected, or given her. A happy accident.

Steve hopes Bucky will know the same fate.

A gasp, at his side. Steve’s heartbeat speeds up, thinking someone has recognized him, until he turns, and only finds a young couple, watching recent footage of one of his missions. One of the women’s jaw hangs open, her girlfriend lovingly teasing her about her crush on Captain America. The other blushes, and kisses her in retaliation, before awareness of her surroundings strikes, and she looks around, red as a tomato.

Shaking his head, laughing silently at the young couple’s antics, Steve makes his way back outside.

Back at his apartment, he finds that the day is already dimming. He’d spent longer than he’d thought hanging around the museum, reminiscing. But it doesn’t hurt as much as it had before, and for that, he’s thankful.

He crosses the threshold with a sigh. Turns on the lights as he casts a quick glance around his ever still surroundings. Maybe he should get a cat. Or a dog. He’s always loved golden retriever. Has been compared to one on more than a single occasion, especially on Twitter – the place is PR nightmare, and he hasn’t been authorized to run his own account ever since he started spouting political stances that embarrassed the White House. At least the company would do him good.

Papers are scattered on his table. He’d been sketching, earlier this morning. Mindless doodles, which had quickly turned to more. And if Steve couldn’t draw the Atlantean sceneries, its people were another matter entirely.

He’d started with Milo and Kida, focusing on the gesture, the presence of his drawings more than the details, and then shifted to proper portraits. Ayo and Okoye had been easy enough to draw, with their neutral expressions, tattoos and shaved heads scattered around on the pages. Then had come the struggle of Shuri and Tony, and infusing a different sort of genius in the two of them. He’d loved drawing out Shuri’s braided hair. Tony’s goatee though? Not as much.

Avoiding the matter at hand only worked for so long, though. Only thirty minutes in, he’d found himself sketching a familiar jaw, plump lips, beautiful blue eyes, reflected in the tattoo around the right one, dark hair tied back into a bun. Obsessively, he’d drawn at least six different portraits. Bucky’s smirk. His laugh. The peaceful expression on his face while taking care of his creatures. Determination marring his features as they set out to war. He’d captured everything, until he couldn’t bear to look at it anymore, and decided to go outside.

Something feels odd, though. It takes him a couple of seconds to put his finger on it, until he remembers he’d put the drawings of Bucky at the bottom of the paper pile, hiding away his sorrow. And now… now they sit back at the top.

Steve tenses. Slowly, he turns on himself, becoming very aware of the stillness in his apartment.

There. In the dark corner of his living room, behind the armchair. A silhouette, arms crossed.

“You’re a real asshole, you know that right?”

The voice cuts through him as though a sharpened blade. He’s so taken aback he forgets to even breathe, frozen still by a voice he’d thought he’d never hear again.

Emerging from the shadows is Bucky, a murderous look on his face, but everything else about him intact, and exactly as Steve remembers.

“You got nothing to say?” Bucky asks again, moving closer and closer still. “Not even an apology?”

Steve’s voice cracks when he tries to reply. “What…”

“I can’t believe you LEFT.” He’s in Steve’s personal space now, all up in there, glaring at him, his finger tapping on Steve’s chest menacingly. “Without saying goodbye. Not even a NOTE, you arse.” Bucky deflates, his shoulders sagging. He turns around, as if suddenly, he’s unable to face Steve.

Silence stretches for a while, Bucky with his back to Steve, Steve unable to form even one coherent sentence, still not quite believing his eyes. He clears his throat a couple of times. Tries to speak once, twice, only croaking. Then finally, he gathers his courage, and speaks. “I had to leave.”

Does it ring wrong to Bucky’s ears as well? Or only to his?

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t even leave a _note_ ,” Bucky retorts, gruff. He still won’t look at Steve.

“To say what?”

At that, at last, Bucky turns back around. He throws his hands in the air, exasperated, his voice wavering. “I don’t know! ANYTHING! That you were sorry. That you had a job to do!” He takes another breath, this one seemingly painful. “That you didn’t want to see me ever again.” A sob threatens to break past Bucky’s lips. Steve can hear it. But he manages to hold it in at the last possible second, and only looks to the side, dejected, eyes shining with the prickle of tears.

He takes a step forward, and extends his hand, softly. It’s instinct at this point, Steve not controlling his body anymore as he wraps a hand over Bucky’s shoulder in a reassuring gesture, giving it a firm squeeze. He wants more now, wants to hug him, to make the pain on Bucky’s face disappear.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He means it on so many levels he isn’t sure Bucky is ready to hear it. But he hopes it translates into his tone, and that Bucky is able to at least catch some of the nuances to it. The silent apologies for endangering not only his life, but his whole people as well.

More silence. Then, Bucky raises his head. Meets Steve’s eyes. “You’re such a moron,” he growls, but it rings like he’s forgiving him instead.

“I know.”

For only a minute, Steve lets his barriers break down. And so he pushes forward, and gathers Bucky into his arms, as close as both their extravagant frames will let him. He soaks in the heat of another human’s body against him, the giddiness of knowing it is Bucky, here and now, not a figment of his imagination anymore but instead tangible. Bucky, who is letting his own hands lock onto Steve’s back, as if holding on for dear life.

“What are you doing here?” Steve asks, relishing in Bucky’s shudder as his breath ghosts over his ear.

Reluctantly, Bucky draws back. It takes a minute before he replies, as if he’s weighing his words, but in the end, he pushes his hand in his pocket, and comes out holding something. “Came to give you this.”

In his palm, there is the crystal.

It glows brighter than it ever has, here in Bucky’s palm, in Steve’s small Washington’s apartment, thousands of miles away from its rightful place. It throws Steve into another loop, thinking of the hassle it must have been for Bucky to come here, to get out of Atlantis so soon after what happened, after he’d been in a _coma_ , god dammit. And yet he traveled across half the world, just for this. He went back to the surface, just for this. The implication isn’t lost on Steve. Nor are the memories of their conversation by the lake, of his fear of the outside world.

Steve chokes on his next words. “You didn’t have to,” he says. What he means is _“Why would you do this? Why would you do this for me?”_

“I wanted to,” Bucky replies with a shrug, but in his eyes there’s a vulnerability, something so small, meaning so much. As if he’s afraid Steve will suddenly throw him away in the street, after all he’s done.

Steve would never.

In fact, Steve is so thrown aback, that he spends a minute more just staring at Bucky. Taking him in, as though he’s still dreaming. And then something inside his chest cracks, and everything comes tumbling down around him. Before he can even think about it, he’s catching Bucky by the back of the neck, and pushing their mouths together.

Kissing him breathless.

It takes a second only for Bucky to move past his initial surprise and reciprocate the kiss. They melt into each other’s arms, Steve savoring every press of their lips, every mingled breath, every little sound escaping Bucky’s mouth. He tangles his hand further into Bucky’s hair, making what he’s sure is a mess out of it, other palm moving frantically from shoulder to nape and back to Bucky’s hips. Bucky’s hands are just as busy, one of them on Steve’s scapula, the other on the small of his back, making sure they’re pressed together closer than Steve would have ever thought possible, the pain of the crystal digging in his back all but forgotten.

He backs away in dire need of air, his mouth feeling raw and his cheeks hot with pleasure and nerves. Stunned silence follows, both of them staring at each other like they’re meeting for the first time. And then Bucky bursts into chuckles, lowering his forehead to Steve’s shoulder, his whole body shaking with his laugh.

Awkwardly, Steve watches him. “O… kay?” he tries, unsure what to do with himself, or what to think of Bucky’s sudden outburst. Was he that bad?

He starts to withdraw, hurt though he tries not to be, but Bucky holds him back, one hand still cupping Steve’s side, his eyes sliding back to Steve’s face, fond. “I just… I can’t believe it took us so long to do that,” he explains, still half laughing, face illuminated by his grin, lips still red from their kissing, making Steve’s heart throb.

“We didn’t get much time to, down there.”

Steve regrets saying it the second he sees a hint of regret swim into Bucky’s eyes. Distance, both physical and metaphorical, spreads between them as Bucky straightens.

“True,” he whispers, seemingly pensive. He taps his foot on the floor a couple of times, as if feeling suddenly out of place, and Steve’s guilt comes rushing back in. Guilt over what he’d done to Atlantis, but also guilt at pushing Bucky all the way out of his boundaries, out of his comfort zone. He knows he ought to feel flattered by it, and he is, in some way, but the gnawing fear never stops.

He decides to shut it up the best way he knows how. If he can apply himself to using this principle on missions, there’s no reason it isn’t applicable in real life. So he chooses the pass that scares him the most, and he trudges on it with determination.

Crossing back to Bucky in one stride, he gathers Bucky’s hands gently in his, and smiles. “Thank you,” he says. He reveals the crystal, still hidden in Bucky’s palm. He takes it slowly, admires the way the dying sunlight reflects on its polished surface. He means to push it around his neck, but Bucky’s hands are there, taking the necklace back, doing it themselves. It feels strangely intimate, more so than their kiss, Bucky’s knuckles grazing his nape, the familiar weight of the crystal around his neck a comfort after the past weeks spent fretting over everything. His key. Back where it belongs.

He promptly ignores the scornful voice in his head telling him he’s making a mistake, allowing himself to hurt the Atlanteans again. He’s convinced Bucky wouldn’t be giving it to him if Queen Kida hadn’t approved. Milo already tried to push it back on him once, after all.

In a reverent motion, he flattens the crystal right against his beating heart, absorbing the familiar light and warmth back into his body. Another hand joins his, the contact electrifying. He shares another look with Bucky, something too heavy for words maybe. Whatever is happening between them feels like it’s both too much and too little at the same time. He wonders if Bucky feels the same way. If the words that are climbing up his throat, so soon, _too soon_ , are how things always are for everyone else.

Steve has only known love once before. Smashed to pieces just as fast as it had grown. He already knows the serum tampers with his emotions, and he wonders, now. Wonders if what he feels is natural. If it is real.

But the staccato rhythm of his heart, the way it squeezes every time his eyes cross with the blues of Bucky’s, his sweaty palms and the butterflies in his stomach aren’t things his brain could fake. So Steve gives a quick kick to his insecurities, and just keeps smiling at Bucky.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

Bucky chuckles, shakes his head. His hand is still on top of Steve’s, gentle. “I’m glad I’m here too.”

They spend a while unmoving, just eyeing each other and their entwined fingers, trying to familiarize themselves with this, whatever it is, whatever it means. Outside, the sun is setting, by the time they manage to shake themselves out of this weird trance.

“Do you want to stay for diner?” Steve asks as they disengage from the contact. He misses it immediately, but doesn’t dare voice it, preferring to clench his hand as he recalls the feeling.

Bucky’s eager reaction, nodding frantically, makes him laugh, and the red that spreads on his cheeks reassures Steve that he isn’t the only one feeling like he’s making a fool of himself in front of the other. “I’m not the greatest cook,” he says – and that’s a euphemism, they’re out and running so much that he either forgets to eat, or swallows whatever is thrown at him by either Nat or Sam -, “but I can make decent pasta.”

“Pasta it is, then,” Bucky nods.

Turns out, cooking is far funnier when you’ve got somebody to do it with. They banter as Bucky makes a Bolognaise sauce with whatever scraps Steve has lying around in his fridge, instructing Steve on the best way to cut onions without making himself cry, laughing his ass off when Steve spectacularly fails.

It’s easy to fall into the familiarity, the domesticity of it all. Easy to forget about the whole world around them. They eat telling each other anecdotes about their lives, brushing off any heavy subject, Bucky telling Steve about Goh-yah’s latest shenanigans, Steve recounting the way he’d almost knocked over an old lady in his haste to catch a bad guy on one of his recent missions. He’d felt so bad about it he’d helped her cross over the street even though he knew his target was getting away. Thankfully, Natasha had been at the corner of a street a mile away, ready to gather their victim in her clutches. He hadn’t stood a chance. This particular story gets a full belly laugh from Bucky. He’s gripping the table, eyes closed, head thrown back, half crying as he tells Steve he can perfectly imagine the whole scene.

Their legs are tangled under the table, tapping into the other’s every once in a while, until it turns into a full game of who will bother the other more. Turns out it doesn’t bother any of them. Steve feels his face heat up considerably as Bucky’s jean-clad – gosh, Bucky is wearing _jeans_ , and it feels nearly more obscene than his usual Atlanteans garments, the way it cups his ass and thighs – leg makes its way up Steve’s own, his nimble foot getting dangerously close to Steve’s lap.

Something rings, startling them both. Steve’s mind is so fogged up by everything that’s been happening it takes him a minute before he realizes it’s his phone – realizes it’s his emergency tune _dammit._ It feels like a cold shower drenching his shoulders, the shock slamming him back into reality. He picks up, panicked.

“What is it?”

Fury’s voice is stern on the other side. It isn’t much, he tells him, just a robbery gone wrong, just people in the hospital as a maniac runs lose, just the print of an old mafia they’ve been chasing for years all over it. Not something for Captain America. Because Fury is an asshole. He knows the second he says this, Steve is going to jump forward, ready to help.

And he does exactly that. He’s dialing Sam in a heartbeat – Nat had told them she’d be occupied tonight earlier today – explaining the situation and scheduling a rendez-vous point in fifteen minutes.

He turns to Bucky, who’s looking at him with fondness in his eyes, even though there’s sadness there as well.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, not for the first time this evening, thought the matter seems trivial here, in comparison.

Bucky shakes his head. “It’s okay. You gotta go and save the world. I hear that’s what you do around here,” he teases.

He tries not to show it, but Steve is sure he’s hurt, deep down. So he plants a quick kiss on Bucky’s cheek, and makes him a promise. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. You can wait here for me in the meantime if you like. Spare keys are in a basket on the highest library shelve.”

And then he’s out, running downstairs to his bike, shield strapped to his back, uniform left at home in his hastiness. It’s not like he needs it. It’s only a symbol, a couple of colors that do well on posters. Steve can fight in anything. He can arrest criminals in everyday wear.

It’s exactly what he does that night. Sam has managed to track down the robbers, and they slam into their operation center guns blazing. It takes barely half an hour to neutralize everyone inside, get a young man to talk about who is boss it, and send all relevant information to Fury. Whether SHIELD will then transmit it to the necessary authorities or handle things themselves is another matter. Steve suddenly feels very wary, realizing he’s only a lap dog, ready to answer Fury’s every whim. For what he knows, those men could have been stealing national secrets, or plotting to overthrow the government, to create a biochemical weapon that could wipe all of the country, or something equally great… Or they could have been simple bank robbers. Is it truly Captain America’s purpose, to be arresting small town criminals?

He crushes the thought under his heel the moment it occurs to him. He isn’t greater than any other superhero for sure, and no job is beneath him. Surely, this isn’t the most stimulating job, not the most shining star added to his portfolio. But he helped. He stood up for the small guy. That’s what he does. That’s what he is about.

So maybe he doesn’t stay for as long as he usually does after a job. Maybe Sam teases him about it, bewilderment in his eyes. Maybe Steve appears more eager to go home than usual. That’s nobody else’s business but his.

When he gets back, though, it’s long after midnight. He finds his apartment empty.

Fear skyrockets in his chest. Fear that something might have happened to Bucky. Fear that he did something wrong during their meal. Or, worst of all, fear that it was all a dream, something his imagination conjured only to soothe his aching heart.

Then he realizes there’s a note on his table, and he relaxes at once. It’s scribbled hastily, in what seems to be hesitant English. No phone number, but there’s an address, and the whole thing ends with a _“Can’t wait to see you again, Bucky”_ , so Steve feels like it isn’t so bad after all.

The night is short. In part because of how late he came back, and in part because Steve is so excited by Bucky’s presence here, in Washington, that sleep refuses to claim him. He gives up on it when six o’clock rolls around, and he’s barely gotten enough to call it a nap. Instead he goes for his morning run with renewed vigor, takes a quick shower, and dresses himself to go and get Bucky. And no, he will never admit it took him three times longer than usual to select an outfit, only to end up choosing a comfortable plaid and nice camel pants.

The address Bucky gave him is a hotel not too far from where he lives. He barely has to knock once before the door opens wide, an eager Bucky on the other side.

“Hello,” he greets, hating that he still feels awkward even though they’d kissed yesterday. He forces himself to appear confident, smiling at Bucky and leaning against the door frame. “I hope you haven’t had breakfast yet, I was planning on taking you somewhere.”

“Perfect,” Bucky sighs. He grabs his bag in a hurry, and locks the room behind him. Before he moves toward the exit, though, he does steal a quick kiss off Steve’s lips, leaving him stunned in the hallway.

“Come on!” Bucky hails, already making his way to the elevator, chuckling.

Dazed, Steve follows.

Out on the street, everything feels so strange. Him, walking beside Bucky, as if they’re both just normal human-beings, and their history, both individual and shared, doesn’t matter. Steve kind of wants to pinch himself, just to make sure it’s real. Instead, he takes Bucky’s hand in his, refusing to blush as he does so, and holds on.

They’re halfway to their destination when a weird question hits him. “How did you find me?” he wonders, turning an inquisitive eye on Bucky.

Silence, for a beat or two. Bucky shuffles, doesn’t really look at him, until he shrugs and just decides to own it. “Asked Stark. He was all too happy to help track you down.”

Steve stares at him. Blinks. “You’re saying Stark, all the way from down there, managed to track my place, even though SHIELD is using top security systems that are supposedly unbreachable?”

Bucky nods. His smile is wicked.

Steve sighs. “Of course he did.” He chuckles slightly, just decides to roll with it. “I’m going to have to tell Fury to upgrade his security _again_ , and fast.”

That makes Bucky laugh. He folds himself against Steve, shaking, and stays there. Steve thinks he might have used the whole laughing thing as a pretext, but he’s not about to complain. Though their time is cut short by the appearance of the place he’d been planning on taking Bucky to.

“It’s an Ihop,” Bucky deadpans. How he knows what an Ihop even is is beyond Steve. He means to ask the question, or at least apologize for the less than romantic setting, but he doesn’t get the time to, Bucky catching a glimpse of who is waiting inside. He whirls on Steve, half offended, half dumbfounded. “I thought this was a date!” he growls vehemently.

Steve smirks. “Never said it was.” He’d wanted for it to be, but traditions are traditions, whether a beautiful Atlantean shows up on your doorstep – or breaks into your apartment – or not.

Sam waves them around the moment they enter, Bucky still grumbling about the place and the company, Steve teasing him for it until a blush creeps up Bucky’s cheeks. Nat only watches the interaction with intent eyes, a cat ready to pounce on its prey at any moment, but just content to toy with it for the moment.

“That’s unexpected,” she says by way of introduction, sipping her coffee as though uninterested, even though Steve knows for a fact she’s itching to ask a hundred questions.

With a scoff, Sam shakes his head. “Yeah right. As if I didn’t tell you about Steve being totally obvious yesterday. As if _you_ didn’t ask Banner to plug in his cameras to see who was waiting for Steve.”

His jaw falls to the ground. “You did WHAT?!”

Nat has the decency to look ashamed, but she only ends up shrugging. “You were acting weird. I was just making sure no one was holding you hostage or otherwise threatening you.”

“This would make no sense if you didn’t lie so well,” Bucky comments, apparently very appreciative of Nat’s poker face and unwavering voice. He doesn’t seem bothered by the fact Nat probably spied on him, which makes Steve relax. Even though he’ll need to have a little discussion with Bruce. And soon. Just because Natasha has a killer smile and a way with words doesn’t mean he should bow down to her every whim. He should know better by now.

Hoping to distract them, Sam leans over the table, and, with a conspiratorial voice, says, “I see you two got awfully chummy. Care to explain?”

Where Bucky had seemed very confident about everything up until this point, Steve suddenly finds him squirming, ill at ease, unable to look Nat or Sam in the eyes, choosing to focus on the breakfast options instead. Steve settles him by catching his hand under the table, and giving it a gentle and reassuring squeeze, a smile on his lips. Then he turns to his friends, and replies in his most level voice, hoping all of his doubts, fears, excitement and desires don’t transpire through too much. “He came all the way from Atlantis to give me this,” he takes the crystal out from under his shirt, showing it off to his friends quickly before hiding it from view again, “back.”

“I didn’t come here _just_ for that,” Bucky mumbles, red.

Both Sam’s and Nat’s smiles stretch far, far too much for Steve’s liking. He kicks them under the table in turn, a silent warning. Only Sam winces, Nat acting like she barely registers the blow.

“Well, you certainly didn’t come back for our gastronomy,” she teases, eyeing the menu with both disgust and envy – Ihop was her suggestion in the first place, the very first time they’d come back from a mission at dawn, exhausted, and desperately needing fuel before the next day. She’d hate to admit it, but she actually loves the place.

Bucky is saved from what he must see as further humiliation by a waiter coming to ask about their orders, distracting everyone from the subject at hand. Not for long, though. Not nearly enough.

“How long did it take you to get all the way up there?” Sam asks, half incredulous.

Bucky shrugs. “Stark and Shuri have loads of contacts up here. Barely a couple of days.”

“A couple of days!” Sam groans, throwing his hands in the air, obviously remembering their weeklong struggle to get through the ocean, and then the cave systems, all the way to the island. Steve has to admit the prospect of reaching Atlantis in under forty-eight hours feels like a dream. A dream that’s sprouting all sorts of possibilities with it. But he shakes his head, forcing himself to focus instead on what’s being said at the table.

“How’s everyone?” Nat asks, her voice nearly a whisper. Steve can read the lines of tension on her body like an open book, and it makes him want to wince.

Bucky takes a while to think, enough than when he finally speaks, their plates are in front of them, but everyone stays put, instead of digging in like they usually do. “Mostly okay. We only had two dead, in the end. Not counting the animals,” he shudders against Steve, a visceral thing which makes Steve reach out with an arm around his shoulders, offering comfort as best as he can, hurt spreading through his very core as he recalls the battle. “We mourned them and moved on, because that’s what we do. As for the other casualties…” A bitter smile spreads on his features, looking out of place on his soft cheeks. “Well, you can see I’m in one piece, or nearly there anyway.” He taps his cold hand, making it jingle with a metallic thud, but never unlaces it from Steve’s. It’s the small victories.

“We’re sorry.” Sam’s and Nat’s words echo in unison, heads downcast, forks and food forgotten, untouched.

“I know. _We_ know. No one blames you for what happened.”

Steve sighs. “Sometimes I wish they would.”

“Blaming you won’t bring back anyone. It won’t make it disappear, won’t turn back time.” In a whisper, he adds, “it’s not like I really want that anyway.”

His smile is small. A precious thing. Steve gathers the vision very close to his heart, burning the memory into his eyelids, to relive whenever he feels down, or whenever guilt ensnares him so much he can barely think, let alone speak.

Silence settles over them like a blanket, just as suffocating as it is comforting. In the end, Sam groans, mutters something unintelligible, and just starts digging into his food, complaining that it’s cold now. Everyone follows, the mood lightening sensibly as they fill their bellies with very unhealthy mouthfuls of pancakes and French toasts.

“I have a question,” Nat suddenly says, pointing her fork at Bucky in what would be a threatening gesture if her mouth wasn’t half full of food, some of it dribbling down her chin. Steve feels baffled every time he gets to witness this. Both because he would never have imagined Natasha Romanoff, of all people, to be a messy eater, and because she trusts them enough to let herself be exactly that in front of them.

Bucky leans back against the seat, his plate finished at record speed, metallic hand still cradling Steve’s. “Shoot.”

“How the heck did you survive that blow?”

Steve’s whole body jumps at the intrusive question, and the reminder that Bucky had been only a hair’s breadth away from death. Beside him, though, Bucky’s doesn’t budge, even slightly. He just levels a placid gaze on Natasha, and shakes his head. “That’s a secret that’s not for me to tell.”

Secrets. Always secrets. Steve finds that he doesn’t mind that one, isn’t upset about it like he might have been with others keeping information from him before. But he trusts Bucky. With his life, probably. That’s where the difference lies.

“How did the swordfishes hold up?”

Steve is grateful for Sam’s question, gently stirring them away from heavier topics. Quickly, easily, they all fall into conversations about engineering, Bucky recounting Shuri’s latest prowess, Stark’s latest achievement, passion stirring in his voice, mimicked in both Nat’s and Sam’s expressions as they ask all the questions that flow through their minds.

They snap back to reality when Steve feels a shift in the atmosphere around them. He isn’t the only one. Nat’s head shifts to the side minutely, her gaze focusing on something behind him, and Sam’s and Bucky’s banter falls away quickly.

“We’ve been spotted,” Nat scowls, eyebrows drawing together.

“Who?” Steve asks. His back is to the door, vest still around his shoulders, cap on his head like every time he goes out. They’re usually more discreet, the waitress always making sure their favorite booth in the darkest corner is available, but they’d made a bit of a ruckus today, it seems. Or maybe someone had just been a bit sharper than usual.

“College students. Incoming.”

Steve hears the pitter-patter of feet before he sees the silhouettes into his peripheral vision. Girls, probably college students as Nat had guessed, clutching their phones or notepads, pens drawn. He’s usually all for signing autographs or taking pictures with fans. Even now, he can’t find it in himself to be mad at them, only ever so slightly bothered. But he wishes that, out of all the times they’d eaten here, in this very Ihop, they’d chosen another day.

The worst part is feeling Bucky’s hand withdraw from his own when the girls stop beside their table. None of the students seem to catch the gesture, tiny as it is, but it hurts all the same. He understands, though. He’s supposed to have a reputation, and he isn’t sure he’s ready to make his coming out just yet. Not now. Not when he isn’t even sure what his relationship with Bucky is, or where it might take them.

One of the girls clears her throat, color high on her cheeks. She seems to have been elected leader of her little troupe, and to be struggling with the role. “Sorry to bother you,” she says, voice wavering. “We just… we just wanted to know if you’d be willing to sign, and take a couple of selfies with us.”

Steve sees Sam’s glare before anyone else does and chastises him with a glance. The Falcon is usually the cheeriest one with fans, but it seems like he can feel this isn’t a good time as well.

“We’d be delighted to sign a couple of autographs for you. We can’t say yes to the selfies, though. Safety issues, superhero stuff,” Steve argues, staying as vague as he can. It isn’t lying, precisely, since it’s mostly true, but a selfie taken close enough, without any trace of their surroundings, or captions that could lead to finding them, could technically be okay. He isn’t about to tell the girls that. “I’m sure you understand.”

He sends them his most blinding smile, and fits of giggles spread among the girls, all of them nodding their assent and agreeing to not divulge information on the place they’d seen them or what they were doing. A couple of minutes later, and they’re back on their way, smiling blissfully and whispering among themselves.

Nat sighs, cracking her back as she stretches. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

“You realize the next press conference is in less than a week, right,” Steve tells her, only for the pure joy of seeing her wince and groan.

“Dammit. I’d take college students and most fans over journalists or sharky politicians every single day.”

“Same,” Sam mumbles, finishing his milkshake with his mood considerably soured.

“You’re all being far too glum for such a gorgeous day,” Bucky’s voice cuts through their mopping, Steve focusing back on him in an instant. Though he still looks very much out of his element, he’s smiling at them, making fun of their antics. “And there are tons of things to see and do.”

His chair scraping on the floor in a loud sound, Sam rises, smug. “You’re right. I’ve got things to do. Important, classified stuff. Can’t tell anything about it.” He jams Nat, still sat beside him, with his elbow in a pathetic attempt at discretion, Steve and Bucky both staring at the brutish display.

“… right.” Nat’s voice isn’t very convinced, and she’s looking at Sam like a fly buzzing around her, bothering her, seconds before she swats it away. She does rise, though, wishes them a good day, tells Bucky she’s glad to have seen him again. They agree on diner at Natasha’s place – the biggest of their three apartments – in a couple of days, and then they’re off, leaving Bucky and Steve to their own devices.

“That was weird,” Bucky comments. Steve nods in agreement, though he knows exactly what his friends were trying to do.

The Ihop suddenly feels stuffy around them, so Steve pays, thanks their waiter, waves at their usual waitress with a few thanks, and then he’s leading Bucky back outside, breathing in Washington’s polluted air, and instantly missing Atlantis’ blue skies and gigantic forests. Here, there are only cars driving around noisily, gloomy people on the streets, and the constant acrid smell of a big city.

Bucky doesn’t seem bothered. He doesn’t even seem surprised by anything, didn’t yesterday either, like this isn’t new at all to him. Like he doesn’t come from a century ago, or an island buried far, far underground.

“When was the last time you came to earth?”

Jolted out of his thoughts, Bucky turns to Steve, and buries his hands in his leather jacket. Come to think of it, it’s probably just as old as he is, a vintage people would pay greatly for nowadays. “Not too long ago, actually. I think five years?” he doesn’t seem very concerned, but Steve can still see the tension, hidden deep. “I didn’t stay long, but Stark heard me talk about my love for science, and there was a really huge expo in LA, so he took me there.”

Steve has to imagine Bucky, lost in a huge science fair, eyes wide, and breath short as he takes in everything humans can do nowadays.

“I hadn’t come here in something like fifty years… they were moving faster than I had anticipated,” he chuckles, eyeing the towers surrounding them, the bus that whistles past, the old lady walking her dog in a nearby park. “So many people.”

Too many, Steve wants to say. But it isn’t true. Though his skin sometimes itches with the weight of the eyes trained on him, or the constant movement of a bursting city, he does like the world, and its people. He wouldn’t be who he is if he didn’t. Some rotten apples don’t mean the whole lot of them has to be thrown away, after all. And he’s impressed by the people’s resilience and will to fight, when it comes down to it. With the way one good deed always sparks another. If he can be an inspiration to even one of them, then that’s already enough.

They walk back to his apartment without really meaning to, wandering around until they reach his door. He’s about to ask if Bucky wants to come in, but he doesn’t have to. Bucky whips out the spare key, and opens the door with a practiced motion. Steve will never admit that this, of all things, does it for him.

He stands in the doorway, feeling awkward, watching over Bucky and the way he lights up the apartment around him as he takes off his shoes and coat, and starts putting away the dishes he’d washed yesterday.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know,” Steve says, picking the glasses and putting them on his top shelf.

Bucky shrugs. “I don’t mind. Wasn’t gonna leave you with dirty dishes on the table and flee,” he smiles. Steve knocks him sideways with his shoulder, grateful.

The drawings are still in the living room, moved over to the coffee table, and Bucky grabs them as he sits into the sofa before Steve can steal them away and hide them in a safe place, hopefully where no one will _ever_ find them.

Bucky hums pensively as he looks them over. Steve is pretty sure he’d already seen them, yesterday, but he doesn’t dare say anything, choosing to instead take the book he’d left half open on the sofa, and settle on Bucky’s right, reading.

“Those are really good. You’ve got talent.”

He wonders if the heat he can feel on his cheek is visible to Bucky’s eyes. “They’re just sketches but… thank you.”

“None of that self-depreciating bull. They’re good. Take the compliment, Rogers,” Bucky says, nudging Steve’s thigh with his foot.

Steve swats him away with a half-smile. “Fine, fine! Thank you, your grace, for daring to bestow upon such a worthless peasant as I am your appreciative words.”

“Jeez, you’re a sensitive one,” Bucky teases, leaning forward.

In a second, Steve is upon him. He snatches the papers away from Bucky’s distracted hands, and looks them over to make sure they haven’t been folded or otherwise damaged during Bucky’s shenanigans. When he realizes they’re fine, he sighs in relief.

He tenses, aware of what he’d just done. Bucky is surely about to make fun of him for thinking of his drawings first, or just be affronted by the fact that a piece of paper holds such importance to Steve’s eyes. Instead, he finds him smiling gently.

“You oughta be careful with those, uh?” He says. He slides to Steve’s side, and delicately takes one of the pages back into his hands. It’s the one with portraits of Tony and Shuri, charcoal smudged on the edges. Reverently, Bucky traces the lines of the faces, making sure not to pull at the graphite with his finger, only a hair’s breadth away from the paper. “I really like them,” he says, finally. “Can I keep them?”

Baffled, Steve looks at him for a while without a word. Only blinking, and trying to convince himself he isn’t dreaming.

“I won’t even show ‘em to Stark or Shuri if you don’t want me to. I just really like how you captured their likeness. And who they are inside. And you’d barely known them for a couple of days, a week maybe.” He’s still staring at the art pieces. Steve, for the first time in forever, feels like he needs to pinch himself to make sure he isn’t dreaming.

He clears his throat, suddenly emotional. And finds his voice again. “Sure, you can have them. And uh… I’m glad you like them.”

Bucky smiles, puts the paper back down on the coffee table, and leans closer to Steve’s side. “I’m still not sure what you saw in me,” he says, voice deeper suddenly. “But I like what you captured on there.” He points at the drawings in Steve’s hands, Bucky’s many faces staring back at them, lovingly etched onto the paper. Steve doesn’t have anything to say to that. So he just gulps, and waits.

He realizes his gaze has been wandering when he feels a finger under his chin, turning his face so that he’s looking straight into Bucky’s eyes. He’s very, very close now. “Someone’s been studying me intently,” he whispers, nearly against Steve’s lips. “Maybe you’d like some hands-on practice?”

A laugh. Bursting out of Steve’s chest, impossible to stop, or to even soften, his eyes closing and his shoulders wobbling with it. “Oh god that is so fucking cheesy,” he guffaws, papers slipping from his hand and onto the carpet, Bucky frozen half on top of him.

He can’t stop. He doesn’t know if it’s the nervous energy he’d been holding for a while finally releasing, or that Bucky’s pick up line was really that bad, but it devolves into fits and fits, until finally, he opens his eyes, and finds Bucky glaring at him.

“I was trying to be smooth,” he mumbles, the corner of his lips drawn up by the beginning of a smile, or a laugh of his own.

“Well, try again,” Steve deadpans.

Bucky is about to say something, mouth open, with no doubt a smart retort at the tip of his tongue, but he’s cut short by Steve moving his legs just so, propelling Bucky forward and right into his arms. He catches him, settling his own back against the armrest of the sofa, the light shining on Bucky’s metallic arm reflecting on his face in an ethereal glow, lending an almost paradisiac atmosphere to the whole scene. Bucky, half across Steve’s thighs, one leg dangling off the sofa, leaning on top of Steve, supported by his arms on either side of Steve’s head, and Steve, leaning on the armrest, looking up at him like he’s an angel, straight out of a fairy tale or something.

He doesn’t know who initiates the kiss. Him. Bucky. The both of them. He just knows that one moment he’s staring up into baby blue eyes, and the other he’s floating on cloud nine, lips brushing tentatively against Bucky’s, and something settles in his soul.

Their languid kiss soon turns heated, one of Steve’s hands on Bucky’s nape, the other brushing against Bucky’s ribs as he lets Bucky’s weight pin him down into the sofa. He jolts when he feels the friction of something rigid against his own growing erection, and he feels more than he hears Bucky’s chuckle at his reaction. Its stays that way for a while, as they explore each other’s mouth and bodies, hands shying away from the most interesting places, remaining – mostly, at least – chaste in their ventures.

When Bucky does try to unfasten Steve’s belt, he stops him with a shaking hand. Steve takes a breath, reaffirms his hold, and looks Bucky in the eyes, though he’s feeling anything but brave or strong right now. His brain has melted into a puddle, but his worries keep circling back, like a pack of lions ready to pounce on their unsuspected victim at any time, any sign of weakness.

“What are we doing, Buck?” His voice cracks on the question.

The haze of the kiss clears out of Bucky’s eyes instantly, and he sits back. He doesn’t stray too far, leg against leg still, sharing contact, but the distance still feels like miles away. It’s just another jab at Steve’s heart, another reminder that they’re from worlds apart.

It’s not like Bucky could come back up here. Even if he did, Steve wouldn’t want him to. But Steve… Steve can’t leave, can he? People need him. And he _likes_ being a superhero, loves it even, though it is a tiring and trying job. Captain America can’t retire.

Bucky’s eyes are intense when he answers. “Whatever we damn well want.”

It hurts. It’s exquisite and it’s painful and it’s everything Steve thought he could never have, never even hoped for. It’s a present that comes tied with a ribbon. One he can’t open.

“This… us…” Steve can’t find the words. He doesn’t want to say them, either. He extricates himself from under Bucky, and starts pacing, his living room carpet soft under his feet as he tries to make sense of their situation. “Someone’s bound to get hurt,” he settles for. Because it’s the truth.

Bucky watches him silently from the couch. Steve can see a myriad of emotions fleeting in his eyes, passing so fast he can’t interpret any of them. And his face gives away nothing.

“What do you want?” He suddenly asks.

Steve stops pacing. Breathes. Starts again. “I don’t know!” he groans, arms raised, fists clenched, eyes closed. He’s fricking out. He forces himself to gain control back onto his body. Sits in his armchair, and contracts every muscle in his arms and legs in turns until they start to ache.

A sigh. Bucky is shaking his head. “Well, until you do, I’ll be staying at the hotel. You know where to find me.”

And like that, it’s over. But Steve can’t let him leave. It feels wrong, to simply give up on things. It’s not like him. So he stretches out, catches Bucky’s wrist and makes him stop.

“Bucky…”

He’s listening. Steve takes another step toward him, laces his fingers through Bucky’s even though it only makes his heart contract further, a death grip inside his ribs.

“I really like you,” he says, because that is the truth too. He can do the truth. “But this… this is my first time, my first actual relationship. My last one didn’t end greatly. I’m new to this. And I’m… I’m scared.” He both feels lighter and hollower the moment the admission leaves his lips.

He’s rarely ever scared. If anything, is only a bit shaken, a bit taken out of his depth. But it’s never the terror he realizes he feels when it registers he’s just admitted to Bucky he has a huge crush on him. All his insecurities come flooding back, the anxiety with it, made-up scenarios at the ready, telling him Bucky was only just fooling around, that he’d been imagining it all…

Thankfully, Bucky doesn’t let him simmer long in his dark thoughts. He squeezes Steve’s hand, once, to get his attention, and then pecks his lips. “I really like you too, you dork.” He kisses Steve’s knuckles next, a very gentleman-y gesture that sends fizzles all along Steve’s spine. “And it’s okay to be scared. Don’t you think I am too?”

“You don’t look like you are.”

“Yeah, neither do you, trust me.”

They both laugh a bit at that, atmosphere settling back into comfort. Still, Bucky untangles himself from Steve, and reaches for his coat. “You need time to think things over. I probably do, too. So let’s call this a day, uh?”

Steve hates the way his heart churns at the very idea of Bucky leaving. He clamps it down and nods, though, acting like it isn’t as big a deal as he feels it is. “Yeah, okay, sure.”

“Be careful out there on your adventures, Mister Captain America,” Bucky says, past the door already.

Before he can close it, Steve jams his foot between the door and its frame. Bucky blinks at him.

“See you tomorrow?” Steve doesn’t want to sound desperate, but he probably does.

With a chuckle, Bucky pushes the door back open. “Sure.”

He leaves like that, as if he hadn’t just sprouted a tornado into Steve’s life, and left everything behind him in shambles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> As always, a new chapter (though not as long as this one) coming tomorrow!


	8. Love and loss

The next week turns out to be a whirlwind. Steve gets called on missions far more often than he thought he would – some international conflicts he needs to help settle, a few brainstorming sessions with the team about other problems altogether – and has to juggle that with spending as much time as he can with Bucky. It isn’t easy, but he makes it work.

They don’t talk about the elephant in the room. About what has happened, and what will. For now, they’re content just to be in each other’s company, and learn each other’s rhythm. They go to the movies and kiss in the back seats like teenagers, meet with Nat for a hike through the woods after a short quinjet ride, or spend entire afternoons just lazing around Steve’s apartment, talking about this and that. It goes from trivial things like Bucky’s favorite color – red, surprisingly – to brushing over their war trauma.

Steve doesn’t like talking much about his PTSD. He’s been seeing a therapist for a while now, and it hasn’t gotten easier. Opening up enough to someone, trusting them with the deepest fears he has… it’s something he doesn’t do. He’s Captain America. He’s supposed to be almighty and brave, someone that doesn’t crack under pressure. Not an anxiety-prone serum-enhanced human-shaped person. Even with his friends, he’s never quite breached the subject. Sam knows, of course. Sometimes there are looks between them, a common understanding of the trials of war. And Natasha, though she’s never lived through it, has a deep understanding of what he might have gone through. He just doesn’t like to relive it with them.

With Bucky… somehow it’s different. They talk seriously, but it feels lighter, cracking a joke here and there, trust at its finest. Bucky has stories to share, having spent around as long in the army as Steve had. They find that their regiments weren’t even that far from each other, but Bucky went down before Steve’s appearance as Captain America.

“A couple more months and we could’ve met on the battlefield,” he chuckles, Steve’s head resting in his lap, fingers combing through his short blond strands. Steve has closed his eyes, listening intently, savoring the scalp massage. “I’m not sure I would have wanted to go to Atlantis then…”

Something shatters into Steve’s heart at the words. He’s flattered, really. It also means a lot, that Bucky even just considers he might have given up on Atlantis then, just for his sake. But it’s also too much. Too much trust, too much importance given to Steve and who he is. Instead of voicing that out, he goes for the easier route. “That would have been a mess. And Peggy would probably have kicked your butt.”

Bucky laughs. “Ho, I’m sure she would’ve. I’m just not against some butt-kicking.” Steve opens his eyes to find him smirking, the ghost of Bucky’s touch on the back of his neck sending chills down his back. And it isn’t only because his arm is made of metal.

That night, they both fall asleep on Steve’s sofa. They don’t even realize it. One moment, they’re softly talking about the war, the people they lost, and the next Steve finds himself jolting awake, still in Bucky’s lap, who is half slumped to the side and snoring ever so slightly.

A smile spreads on his face. Very gently, so as not to wake Bucky up, he rises. A groan. Then Bucky settles back on his side, grumbling in his sleep. Steve watches over him for a moment, taking in his relaxed form, here in Steve’s apartment, the way his body is lax with sleep, a bit of drool at the corner of his mouth. It’s all strangely endearing.

Making sure he’s being careful, Steve pushes an arm under Bucky’s knees, the other in his back, and carries him off into the bedchamber. The bed dips as he lowers both Bucky and himself onto it. The intimacy of it all isn’t lost on him, and he hesitates, blushing, before shaking his head and deciding against sleeping on the sofa. First, because it would feel like Hell for his neck tomorrow, and second, because his bed is definitely large enough for two. The third reason, though he barely dares to think it, is because he looks forward to enjoying another presence in bed next to him, some heat other than his own under the covers. So he undresses quickly, puts on his pajama bottoms, and slips under the sheets.

Five more minutes, and Bucky’s snores lull him back to sleep.

*

He wakes to the delicious smell of pancake batter, and the sound of 20s music as if coming from an old radio. He’s so thrown aback, at first, that it feels like he’s fifteen again, his mother on the other side of the wall, humming to a popular song, cooking up breakfast for him. But that was before she fell sick.

Everything comes back to him at once. It’s such a whiplash it makes him dizzy. Grief washes over him like the ocean on an empty shore, and he swallows it down with the bittersweet aftertaste of something that isn’t quite right. Instead, he chooses to focus on the present. On the shuffling in the other room, the swearing when someone burns their hand on the too hot stove.

Moving to the kitchen in a haze, he finds Bucky there, sucking on his burnt thumb, and looking like he _belongs_. There’s a soft smile at the corner of his mouth as he flips his current pancake, satisfied with the golden sheen of it, and puts it in a stack with the others. The movement makes him turn, and he finally notices Steve. Who definitely isn’t staring when his thumb leaves his lips, leaving them shiny and plump.

“Hello beautiful,” Bucky greets. Steve sees the exact moment he becomes aware of Steve’s partial nudity, his pajama bottoms riding low on his hips, torso bare but for the crystal that hasn’t left his neck since Bucky returned it to him.

His mouth open, Bucky stares. He takes in Steve not once, but twice, eyes roaming over pecs and abs, stopping at the V of his hipbones, a loud gulp making its way down his throat. He’s so absorbed in his contemplation he forgets about the stove, still hot. When he leans backward, probably trying to settle himself, Steve reaches out and drags him forward instead, catching him in his arms.

“You’ve already burnt your thumb,” he admonishes, breath ghosting against the shell of Bucky’s ear. He’s very aware he’s teasing him at this point, but he finds himself liking it very much. “Try not to do the same with the remainder of your arm.”

He delights in the blush that floods on Bucky’s cheeks, right before he’s taken by surprise with a voluptuous kiss. The pancakes are suddenly very much forgotten, the taste of Bucky’s lips so much better than any food he could ever dream of. The hot and cold press of his hands against his skin makes him shiver in exhilaration, traces of Bucky’s fingertips skittering on his hips and back.

They move into a blur, until Steve is the one pinned to the fridge, a position reminiscent of when they first met. Except this time, it isn’t Bucky’s blade at his throat, but his teeth, marking their way down the sensitive skin. Steve heaves a shaky breath, unable to do anything but stay pliant under the ministrations. Every sensation is so new to him, from the shudder in his lungs every time Bucky bites down, leaving a trail of bruises on him, to the stirring in the pit of his stomach as Bucky’s right hand travels lower.

A moan tumbles out of his lips when Bucky’s flesh meets his. There’s a squeeze, a tentative touch, and then Bucky starts moving in earnest, seemingly delighted in the sounds of pleasures he manages to drag out of Steve. He’s jerking him with slow and purposeful motions, and the feel of another’s hand on his shaft, another skin, the very idea that he doesn’t know what Bucky might do next, feels overwhelming, so much so that he’s close to the edge in no time. He would be embarrassed, if he didn’t like it so much.

A door slams, and voices amplify into the corridor. His neighbors. Steve recognizes their voices as they talk about something insignificant, and suddenly he’s rushing back into his body full force, blush high on his cheeks, very much aware of how embarrassing it would be for them to hear him.

Bucky seems to notice his trouble. But, instead of stopping, he just throws a wicked smile Steve’s way, and increases the pressure of his fingers on Steve’s dick. Steve has to clamp his mouth shut so fast his jaw hurts to prevent himself from moaning even louder, the neighbors still in the corridor talking.

Of course, Bucky uses this to his advantage. It seems like he’s decided it is his mission to make Steve’s brain short circuit and to have him spill wanton cries that will forever make him avoid his neighbors. He continues thumbing at Steve’s dick, massaging the crown of it, coming back down to play with his balls, his mouth everywhere on Steve’s skin, a grin on his lips as Steve gasps silently.

“You’re an asshole,” he grits, nearly painfully, his hips quivering under Bucky’s ministrations. He tightens his fingers in Bucky’s hair, tugs at it only halfheartedly as if to scold him.

Bucky’s reaction is immediate. His pupils dilate, his mouth falls open, and a breath comes short on his lips, a nearly silent moan. Steve’s blood flows south faster than it ever has, seeing Bucky’s ecstatic expression of pleasure, and he files away the information for later. Right now, he’s too far gone to think too much about it.

With renewed vigor, Bucky picks Steve apart. He’s close to bursting when, finally, he hears a door shut down the hall, and silence but for their heated breaths surrounds them again. Every single sound he’s been holding back comes rushing out of him, and Steve comes with a strangled cry, Bucky still pinning him down against the fridge.

Pants fill the silence for a minute more, until he finally gets his bearings. He’s about to offer Bucky a hand – literally – but when he meets Bucky’s gaze, it’s glazed over in bliss as well. His own eyes travel lower, and he immediately notices the dark patch on Bucky’s jeans. Steve’s refractory period is fast – he knows, he has tested it out before – but it really isn’t fast enough for the way the idea that Bucky came untouched, just from giving him a handjob, makes his head spin with desire.

With a growl, he pushes himself back up the fridge. “You’re a menace.”

Bucky chuckles, and kisses him breathless. “You’re the one that came out of the room looking like a whole banquet.”

Steve rolls his eyes at this, but in truth, he likes the attention. So he kisses Bucky back one last time, savoring the taste of it.

They both need to clean up before they can finally have breakfast. Steve makes sure to come back out of the bathroom dressed this time, and they manage to eat their pancakes with minimum flirting.

“Those are really good!” Steve exclaims when he takes his first bite.

“Don’t look so surprised. I did have to cook when I lived alone in Brooklyn, y’know. Wasn’t half bad at it either.” He pours chocolate on his own pancakes with the look of a man starving, and Steve remembers Atlantis probably doesn’t have cacao trees. He can understand Bucky’s desperation. “I also have to cook for myself at home, now. Different ingredients, same art.”

It doesn’t escape Steve that Bucky refers to Atlantis as _home_. It makes him wonder what his own home is. When he thinks about it, deep down, he sees the light filtering through the dirty panes of the windows in their little Brooklyn apartment. But what made it home wasn’t the place. It was his mom. Now, home is where his friends are, and where he’s needed. It has always been, in a way. But he had felt a strong connection to Atlantis, and he feels like, with a strong push, he could, maybe…

He shakes his head before the idea can make its way further. He can’t. He knows he can’t.

Bucky seems to sense the change in atmosphere. His smile drops a fraction, and he isn’t swallowing his meal as fast as he just was. Instead, he’s looking at Steve with an unreadable look in his eyes.

It takes a moment before he finally manages to gather himself enough to speak. “I have to go back,” he says, silently, putting his fork down.

Steve blinks. Suddenly, he feels like he can’t focus on words, like they don’t quite mean anything anymore. And then his brain finally computes, and it tears him down. He knows Bucky has to go back. Knew from the moment he set foot in his apartment that he’d have to leave, back to Atlantis, back where he belongs. The fact that he stayed so long, even though his work is never ending down there, is already enough of a show of the importance he bestows upon Steve, and their relationship. In the end, the feeling is bittersweet. Most things seem to be that way with him.

“Okay…” Steve replies, tentative. He doesn’t want to show he’s hurt, doesn’t want to prevent Bucky from going back just for his own selfishness. He can handle the loss, just as he has handled many before. He’s no stranger to it. He will welcome the darkness, even, an old friend settling back in his bones, a void never quite filled.

Bucky struggles a moment more, unable to look Steve in the eye. “I’m not sure I want to,” he confesses in the end.

If his first sentence felt like a slap, this is a true punch to the gut.

“Buck,” Steve’s voice his soft, just as his finger under Bucky’s chin, forcing their gazes to meet again. “You belong there. You can’t leave everything behind, everyone.”

“I know!” The frustration is evident in his voice, and Steve blames himself for putting it there. For forcing Bucky to choose. “But I don’t want to leave YOU behind either. It’s bull!”

Bucky rises, turning his back on Steve, shoulders bunched up and fist shaking. The drag of his own chair against the floor makes Steve wince, but he ignores it in favor of moving as quickly as he can to Bucky’s distressed form. Gently, he takes him in his arms, Bucky’s head coming to rest neatly into the crook of his neck.

“What will Goh-yah do, if you’re not there to look after him?” Steve asks wistfully minutes later, his own words piercing his heart.

Laughter and sobs erupt from Bucky’s mouth in a mingled mess. He’s crying, Steve realizes, feeling wetness sticking to his shirt. So he wipes the tears away with his thumb, and he waits Bucky out.

“The dolt would probably kill himself after a month,” he admits through choked gasps, looking like it hurts him to even say it.

They spend some time like this, wrapped up in each other. Steve’s head is spinning so fast he feels like he might sprain his brain if he doesn’t stop, but there are still a million possibilities to explore, some of which wouldn’t hurt Bucky as much as this seems to. Wouldn’t hurt him as much as he fears the separation will.

“I don’t want to leave you, either. But I have a duty to perform. I can’t leave it all behind.”

Bucky utters a strangled laugh. “Screw the world. You don’t owe it anything.”

He’s wrong. Steve owes the world everything, starting with his life. But he’s not about to argue with Bucky, so instead, he kisses his forehead and says, “Then I owe something to the people in it. To my friends. To the people who made me who I am.”

“Rogers, you’re a goddamn imbecile.”

“I know,” he laughs, bitter. “But I’m an imbecile with ambition. Some would even call it stubbornness.”

A spark lights up in Bucky’s eyes at his words. It’s a tiny, fragile thing, an ember Steve’s desperately wants – needs – to stoke, but it’s there.

He says the next words very carefully, like a vow he doesn’t dare take. “I’ll find a way to make it work. I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Steve.”

His name sounds beautiful between Bucky’s lips. Steve wants to hear it uttered that way for the rest of his very long life. “I don’t.”

Very gently, he lowers his face to kiss Bucky. It’s a far cry from their passionate kisses from earlier, but somehow it feels like more. Like sealing a deed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is finally reaching its "E" rating! That's just a teaser though ~
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> See you all tomorrow!


	9. Forced vacation

Steve’s heart shatters when Bucky leaves. He kisses him one last time, with the full force of a hurricane, and then he watches as a private jet whisks him away. The last eye contact they share stays burnt into his eyelids for days.

The next weeks are as chaotic as they usually are, with added mopping – as Sam would call it – and also added hassle, while he tries to work out a way with his team and SHIELD to make do on his promise. Steve wakes at night clutching the crystal, the faint glow both reassuring and a torture, so small now that it’s far away from its source. He has nightmares in which the entrance to Atlantis is forever cut off, or in which the Leviathan doesn’t recognize him as a friend anymore, and drowns him before he can reach the gates. The worst ones, though, are those where he sees Red Skull invade the city, laughing like a maniac, killing everyone in his path. He sees Bucky, bloodied and battered, fighting for his life. He sees the gun, cocked against his head. The trigger being pulled.

He always wakes up at the sound of the gun firing. He wonders if that’s better, or worse, than seeing what’s supposed to happen next.

People can tell he’s distracted. He still does his job, and does it well, but he zones out on interviews, or stumbles when he sees the back of a man’s head with a bun. Nat, Sam and Bruce are getting worried. But they’re also the best support system he could have ever dreamed of.

He’s on a stake out – some alien life form has apparently decided to make their lives an hellish nightmare for the past couple of days, and they’re trying to find it and catch it – when he makes a mistake that nearly turns fatal. Something glows a pale blue, in the back of a van, next to the supposedly empty warehouse. It’s such a distinctive color, it couldn’t be anything but Atlantean. It makes something boil into Steve’s blood. It makes him become reckless.

He moves before he’s even aware of it, running to the van as discreetly as he can. He’s about to throw the cover obscuring his view of whatever his inside away, when someone collides into him, and pins him down. Hooking a leg behind his assailant’s, he’s about to flip them over and give the guy a beating when he notices it’s Sam, a pained expression on his face. When he looks up, there’s a weirdly shaped spear embedded into his friend’s back.

Steve’s breath leaves him in a rush when he realizes what just happened. Sam saved him. Took a spear to the back for him. But he doesn’t have time to even thank him. Whatever attacked them emits an otherworldly screech. Movement catches Steve’s peripheral vision, something quick and deadly skittering through the night. He gets Sam out of there as quickly as he can, deposits him near some crates after making sure he’s still conscious and not in immediate danger of dying, beeps SHIELD’s headquarters for an extraction, and goes back into the fight with renewed vigor.

He fights the monster. He wins. He collects the artifact in the van discreetly, a beautiful carved stone that glows the closer it gets to his own crystal. But in his brain, there’s only one thing that matter, and it isn’t the Atlantean object anymore.

He drives to the hospital faster than he’s legally allowed. Gets pulled over by cops, who instantly apologize when they recognize him, and insist on escorting him the rest of the way so it doesn’t happen again. A whole aisle of the place has been secured down by SHIELD. Hill is the first one to greet him, and he can already see she has questions, Fury’s presence looming behind her even though he isn’t there. Steve ignores her, and instead runs to another familiar silhouette.

Natasha is pacing around in circles like a lioness caged, snapping at everyone that comes too close. When she recognizes him, however, she stills. And then she punches him, square in the jaw. Steve’s head snaps to the side, not from the force of it, but from sheer surprise at the gesture.

“I saw the footage, Steve.” It’s all she says, venom in her voice, hurt magnifying it tenfold. “If anything happens to him, I swear I’ll kill you.” And with that, she walks away.

He follows her to where they’ve put Sam, silently. He’s in a lonely room, guards at the door, curtains drawn around the bed. Still asleep when they go inside. Steve can see the bandages peeking from under his hospital gown, and it makes something terrible shake inside of him. He’s so angry at himself. Angry he was so obsessed with Atlantis he forgot to be careful. Angry Sam would throw himself in the way to protect his life, as if he isn’t a mere human, while Steve could have handled the wound as if it were barely a scratch. He’s so angry it makes his vision blurry.

Plummeting on a chair with a big sigh, he sorts through his feelings, methodically. His therapist has taught him how to do it, but when everything he focuses on is the weight of his own mistakes, and the all-encompassing fear of losing his friend, it becomes much harder than during sessions. Still, he dissects through his mind. Sorts through what the serum is exacerbating, making his mind reel, and files away some of the overwhelming emotion into a tight little bag, to deal with later. Instead, he reorients his thoughts to how grateful he is to have Sam. How amazing his friend and teammate is. How much he owes him.

Nat watches him from the corner of her eye. He can tell she’s still mad, but also sad and scared, knows she understands what goes through his head. He throws her a smile, ignores how hurt he feels when she turns her head away, and instead goes to a vending machine just outside of the room, to buy himself some refreshments. Throwing a sandwich in her direction, he isn’t surprised when she catches it in midair without looking, and opens the wrapping methodically, still silent.

It takes hours before Sam’s eyes flutter open. He squints, the hospital’s bright lights too much for his poor eyes, and groans. Steve feels a wave of relief wash over him.

“You owe me, Steve,” are Sam’s first words, and Steve can’t help laughing, a tear at the corner of his eye that he wipes quickly on his sleeve.

“That I do.”

Nat sits on the bed, next to Sam, asks him how he’s feeling. He shrugs, whimpers, and then tries to pretend like he didn’t get stabbed in the back only a few hours ago. They run into circles trying to make him admit that he’s hurt, or mad at Steve, or really anything that would feel cathartic, both for him and for them, but he’s so mellowed it’s a losing battle.

His eyes shift to Steve again, intense. He opens and closes his mouth a few times before he’s able to say what he wants to. “The thing in the van… what was it?”

“Just a big piece of stone with carvings,” Steve sighs, shaking his head. It’s still in his pocket, so he pulls it out, and gives it to Sam. Nat lowers her head to read the inscriptions while they admire it.

“Something about faith…” she mutters, more to herself than anything.

Silence settles. It’s broken a minute later, Sam’s voice grave. “You have to go back.” His tone is definitive, more serious than Steve has heard him in a while. It rings true. But it hurts all the same.

“It’s not that simple…”

“It is. You know it is. You’re just scared of getting hurt. But you can’t protect yourself forever, Steve. Not when it compromises your very happiness.”

Steve recognizes the man used to helping war vets deal with their trauma in Sam the moment he utters those words. He wants to laugh it off, but something’s stuck in his throat, and he can only gulp. Lowering his eyes to the floor, he tries to process the words. Is he really afraid of rejection that much?

The truth settles into his bones like a heavy blanket. Because Sam is right. He _is_ scared. He’s scared Bucky might brush him off after only a couple of weeks together, when the newness fades, and Steve will have thrown himself into this relationship, and all its hardships, for nothing. He’s scared he’ll finally get a real taste of Atlantis, only to be forced back to Earth like a mongrel. He’s scared he isn’t deserving enough of Bucky’s love, or Kida’s trust, or his teammates’ faith.

But Steve has been scared all his life. And if it didn’t stop him before, it’s not about to stop him now.

So he raises his head, meets Sam’s eyes, and nods. Sparking a rush of joy into his friend’s eyes.

“Take a vacation, Steve,” Nat’s voice surprises him. “Another one. We’ll handle everything while you’re down there. I’m pretty sure no one will even notice you’re gone. Or care, for that matter.” She says the jab with a smile, which is the only reason he doesn’t take it personally.

He waits until Sam is mostly healed. With means another two weeks prancing around his apartment like it’s a cage, and blaming himself for not giving his most to work. But the moment Sam is discharged, and a first physical exam clears him to start working again – slowly, the doctors said, but Sam doesn’t do anything slowly, no matter how much he likes to say he does everything Steve does, just slower – Steve packs his luggage. It’s only a rucksack, and his shield. Knowing what he knows about Atlantis now, he won’t be needing anything else.

Fury accepts his second vacation in less than a year with a wary nod, and a warning, telling him to keep his earpiece in at all time, should they need his help back up here. Steve accepts distractedly, having eyes only for the quinjet that’s waiting for him. Thank god autopilot was invented, because he doesn’t think he could drive this thing safely in his state, and he doesn’t want to ever have to crash a plane into an ocean again.

The journey through the sky passes by in a blur, until he’s sinking down into the cold waters of the ocean, necklace pulsing against his neck the closer he gets to Atlantis. When the Leviathan wakes, he’s ready. He doesn’t even tremble. He just stays put, waiting for the looming red eyes of the creature to assess him, feeling the glowing beams focus on his chest, before the machine retracts back into the depths with contented clicks. He finds the crevasse in no time, and then he’s back into the tunnel system.

When he remembers he has nearly a one-week trip ahead of him, he feels like dying. Excitement makes him nearly vibrate out of his body, thinking about seeing Bucky, and all of Atlantis, again, but it’s quickly crushed by the impending doom that is making his way through caverns with traps and nightmarish creatures. But it’s not like he has a choice. So he starts walking.

He’s so motivated, and so hyped, he barely sleeps, or eats. He stops only for a few hours a day, telling himself to conserve his strength, even though his brain keeps circling through the same thought without putting much weight behind his rational thinking. It means he’s reaching the cave where he’d first met Bucky, with its ornamented pillars and the sequels of the fight with HYDRA still very visible, only three days after he set foot underground. Breath heavy with fatigue, he sighs.

The atmosphere around him still sits heavy with the aftermaths of the battle, and Steve has to lower himself on a boulder and rest, if only for a couple of minutes. He looks at one of the half-smashed columns that used to spire all around the cave, supporting its dome, works of art that probably took the Atlanteans years to carve. He moves then to the different piles of rocks, most of them already pushed out of the way, leaving traces of scuffle in their wake. Footprints, here and there, remind him that there weren’t only humans fighting that day. He recognizes the paw shape of a fanged dog, among others. He hopes it survived the fight.

Shaking the unsettling feeling from his skin, Steve moves on to the next – and last – cave. Then he takes a big breath, and he emerges outside, and into the light.

Atlantis hasn’t changed. He didn’t leave it that long ago, and though they evolve at a truly mind-blowing speed, a couple of months isn’t enough to do much, except, he notices, putting more swordfish machines into the sky. Still, he is just as awed by the beauty of the lost city as when he first set foot down there. He spends a few long minutes just gaping at the island, magic permeating the air, the familiar sounds of water, laughter, and flying machines a balm to his ears.

That’s how one of the patrolling guards on his ketak finds him. Gaping at the world around him, feeling like he’s come home.

The warrior’s first reaction is to draw his spear on Steve, until he gets closer, has a good look at him, and immediately lowers it, greeting Steve warmly, thanks and warm words for him aplenty. He gets taken to the queen almost instantly. Everywhere he looks, he sees familiar faces. He doesn’t know all their names, but he likes the idea that maybe, someday, not too far in the future, he’ll get to learn them.

And then he crosses path with Okoye.

She stops, dead in her tracks, like she’s seen a ghost. Blinks a few times. Steve waves at her, in the hopes that she will not pull a Natasha on him, and attack him on sight. Thankfully, she doesn’t. She just stumbles to him – and Steve is very surprised to find that _some_ things seem enough so shake her out of her impassible demeanor – and asks him, bluntly, what he’s doing here.

“Apparently, I was missing you all,” he eludes. He isn’t really sure how to answer her question anyway.

She escorts him to the throne room. It’s empty when they get there, and someone goes to fetch Queen Kida. While they’re gone, though, Steve hears the pitter-patter of small feet running toward them. A child bursts through the room to his right, laughing in a high voice, barely paying them any attention as she rushes to the other side of the hall. Behind her, the queen is running as well, laughing just as much, trying to pretend like she’s a monster about to eat her daughter.

And then she notices someone else is in the room, and she freezes.

She’s as taken aback by Steve’s appearance as Okoye was, and Steve wonders if, somehow, he should have sent a letter announcing his arrival. Thankfully, Kida composes herself in record time, coughs to clear out her voice, apologizes quickly to her daughter, and walks up to him.

“Soldier Rogers,” she greets, and he’s happily surprised to find a warmth he wasn’t expecting in her voice.

“Queen Kidagakash.”

“To what do we how the pleasure?”

He decides to be as honest as he can be. Not that he has anything to hide, but he still isn’t sure what to tell her. And he doesn’t dare presume of anything, given what his visit caused last time. “I was wondering if you would be so kind as to welcome me in your midst for a few days again. It seems I was allowed a few days off, and I found myself missing Atlantis, and its people, more than I thought I would.”

The queen seems to consider his words very carefully. He doesn’t blame her. Still, he feels like a child ready to hear the results of a test back, convinced he’s failed. It makes his heart hammer into his chest, and sweat break across his brow.

In the end, Kida only smiles at him, radiant. “We’d be happy to. No matter what you may think of yourself, Steve Rogers, the people of Atlantis, and the island itself, have deemed you worthy. Do with it as you will.”

The words warm him through his very core. He isn’t sure what they mean, exactly, has yet to learn all the intricacies of how this place works. But, just like getting to know each person living here, he’s looking forward to getting taught everything about Atlantis.

He’s turning on his feet, ready to leave – ready to do the only thing he’s been thinking of for the past few days, see Bucky – when the queen hails him back.

“Come for diner sometime. I’m sure Milo, my daughter and I would be delighted to hear the stories you have to tell.”

With a nod, and feeling so light he wonders why he isn’t floating, he leaves.

Okoye waits for him at the bottom of the palace stairs, looking both thoughtful, and like she has a set goal in mind. He understands what it is the moment she drags him behind her, to a small path serpenting away from the palace, and into rock outcroppings, until they’re in front of an aktirak.

“Don’t bruise it, or I’ll make sure you get exactly the same treatment,” she warns. She doesn’t seem like she’s joking. Still, she leaves the machine in his care, and goes back where they came from.

Alone, in front of the hammerhead shark, Steve has one single thought of turning away and running back where he came from, as if he never set foot here today. It lasts only a second, far too long already, before he shakes his head, and climbs into the machine, eyebrows furrowed and jaw set. He activates it with a clever twist, and relishes the feeling of it hovering in the air, waiting patiently for his commands.

He flies over the city in a blur. Not only because he’s going fast – though, he admits he’s probably over whatever speed limits the Atlanteans have defined for their aerial space – but because his mind refuses to focus on anything else but the fact that, in a couple of minutes, he’ll be seeing Bucky. It means he finds himself hovering close to Bucky’s rehabilitation center only what feels seconds after he’s taken off. He lands as slowly as he can, which is not slowly at all, and disembarks with a jump, feeling like his heart is about to tear itself out of his chest.

The sensation only grows further as he steps in the direction of the buildings. He can hear the now familiar sounds of the creatures roaming around, thinks he catches a sight of Goh-yah’s giant head pocking out between bushes at some point, but his focus is elsewhere. When he enters the main house, his hands grow clammy, and his guts twist together. He might just throw up. And what a vision that would be, as a greeting for Bucky. But the house is empty. Instead of making him breathe easier, it only serves to increase his nerves.

By the time he gets to the nursery, he’s nearly shaking with barely contained excitement and nervous energy. It’s quieter in there, and Steve instinctively takes greater care with his steps, advancing in silence. He sees Bucky’s shadow first, reverberated against a wall, a creature in his arms. When Steve finally turns the corner, and Bucky comes into plain sight, he manages to notice it’s a lava puppy. And then his gaze gets sucked in by the other man in the room, and he can do nothing but gape.

Bucky hasn’t changed in any way since Steve last saw him, and yet it feels like he’s meeting him for the first time again. But no, he has the time to clearly study him. To notice the unruly hair that comes undone at his nape, refusing to stay in his bun, the way his lips are tilted into a soft smile as he cares for the puppy, his nearly bare torso in a traditional Atlantean cloth leaving the scar on his left shoulder exposed, the transition harsh with his mechanical arm, that softly glows with the same blue light as the crystal that’s also around his neck. There are bruises and dirt on his arm, chest and the little Steve can see of his legs, probably from wrestling with animals all day. Somehow, it only makes him more attractive.

Steve looks his fill, before he decides it’s time to make his presence known. He swallows the lump in his throat, and takes a very deliberate step, making sure to make as much noise as possible with it. He sees Bucky tense, and turn around, bracing himself. And then their eyes meet.

Shock makes way to confusion makes way to what Steve would probably qualify as happiness into Bucky’s eyes, a myriad of expressions floating around his face, not knowing on which one to settle. He gapes, unable to say a world, and Steve sees his arms relax around the lava puppy because of the shock. He hurries close, wraps a hand around Bucky’s wrist and pushes his own arm to support the not inconsiderable weight of the creature.

“Let’s not drop the baby, umh?”

Still reeling from the shock, Bucky continues to stare at him. He does, however, tighten his grip on the animal with one arm, freeing the other to push it against Steve’s biceps. He feels around for a moment, blinking. “You’re real,” he says, as if he still can’t quite believe it.

“Captain America in the flesh,” Steve teases, gripping Bucky tighter, to assure him that he is, indeed, there with him.

“I don’t… how…” Questions seem to be bustling into Bucky’s brain. It’s not that Steve doesn’t want to explain, but Bucky doesn’t seem ready to hear any of his story right now. Also, there’s something he’s been dreaming of doing since the moment Bucky left, and he isn’t about to pass up on the opportunity. After all, Bucky’s lips are still open, ripe for the taking.

So Steve leans down for a kiss. He captures Bucky’s lips in his, gently at first, increasing the pressure when he feels him grow more responsive. The struggling lava puppy between them makes the angle a bit awkward, and means they have to part sooner than he really wants to, but as far as reunion kisses go, it isn’t half bad.

Bucky keeps whispering “oh my gods” as they withdraw from each other, asking Steve to pinch him, to make sure it’s all real. Steve laughs, a sound sweet even to his own ears. He stops just because the lava puppy starts to gnaw at his arm, the pressure not yet unbearable, but the force in its jaw evident from such a short contact.

“Okay, okay, put it down before something terrible happens.”

Bucky does, carefully. And then he’s throwing himself back into Steve’s arms, hugging him until he’s nearly crushing his ribs, like he will never let go again. Steve isn’t sure he minds. Especially when Bucky is kissing him again, ravenous, hand scraping Steve’s nape, clutching his t-shirt, roaming all over his skin as if he might disappear any second and he wants to imprint everything about Steve into his memory. Steve lets him, more than pleased.

He gets submerged by the kiss, by the way Bucky’s body fits against his, the desperation morphing into adoration as the minutes go on. Finally, they both settle, out of breath and a bit dazed. Bucky watches him for a long moment in silence, still stricken. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I won’t pinch you to prove it, no matter how much you ask. Kiss you, however…” Steve lowers himself, ready to dive back in, but Bucky only pecks his lips quickly, questions ready to tumble out of his mouth.

And tumble they do. “How did you get here? How long are you staying? What… what are you even doing here? Jesus, Steve, you could have warned me! I’m barely presentable right now. I can’t believe you would…”

Steve shuts him up the best way he knows how. With another kiss. Something short and sweet.

“I’ll tell you everything. Let’s just get out of here, I think we’re disturbing the babies from their nap.” One of the fanged puppies _is_ glaring at him in a very mean way, yawning every now and then.

Bucky literally drags him out of the nursery, and back into his home. That’s how Steve realizes he never visited it before. He’d seen the lobby the first time he came here, but never gotten further inside.

It’s a beautiful cozy thing. Where most Atlantean houses are built with a lot of openings, Bucky’s looks more like a traditional earthly thing on the outside. On the inside though… it’s ridden with plants, animal toys, papers and technology and trinkets of all sorts. To the untrained eye, the lowest floor, that seems to serve as a kitchen, a dining room and a living room all in one, is absolute chaos. Somehow, he’s ready to bet Bucky knows exactly where everything is in all this mess.

“Sorry about… that,” Bucky mumbles, blushing and wincing at the same time. “I don’t really get many visitors, so I tend to get pretty messy.”

Steve shrugs. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

Bucky moves through the place easily. He pushes a few things off his couch in a hurry, half shoving Steve onto it before he settles himself against him. “Okay, tell me everything.”

So Steve does. At least he tries to.

“I told you I’d find a way. It’s nothing definitive, not yet anyway, but maybe I can manage to squeeze in some vacations pretty regularly, to come down here and see you.” He explains his negotiations with SHIELD, tells him his friends have things handled up here when Bucky worries about the effect of Captain America disappearing suddenly on crime rates and such.

“How long are you staying?”

Steve clenches his teeth. He wants to say _“forever”_ , but he knows he can’t. And it’s not just because Fury told him to come back. It’s also because, no matter how much he loathes to admit it, he’d miss being up there, and helping people. It’s just that he wishes he could do that, and still come home every night to Atlantis, and to Bucky’s waiting arms. Damn scientists, for not having invented teleportation yet. He should probably ask Tony and Shuri about that. He’s sure they have some ideas already.

“Probably no more than a week. Two, if Fury doesn’t decide to call me back up just out of boredom,” he taps his earpiece with a wince, hating the thing even though he’s grateful he has a link to the surface thanks to it.

To his surprise though, Bucky only smiles softly, and drops a kiss on his cheek. “One week’s already plenty of time. More than I would’ve wished for.”

That night, they find themselves tangled in each other’s arms, incapable of letting go. They whisper long into the evening, their breaths mingling on the pillows, each asking updates on the other’s life, as if they’re starving for information.

Bucky’s the first one to fall asleep, though he does so begrudgingly, arms wrapped tight around Steve’s back, head settled in the crook of Steve’s neck. Though Steve would love to join him, his brain is restless. Every time he closes his eyes, he thinks about how little time he has to spend here, how he doesn’t want to waste any. The sterile thoughts keep him up way into the night, until, finally, sleep rises to claim him.

He wakes shortly, to Bucky moving out of bed. The aftermaths of his whole brain turning too quickly and the long days of traveling make themselves known, eyelids droopy and mind still groggy. Thankfully, Bucky pushes him back into bed, well aware of his fatigue, and tells him to sleep in, with one last kiss on his forehead before he goes to do whatever he’s supposed to do when the day has barely begun.

When Steve’s eyes open again, breakfast time is well passed, entering lunch territory. His stomach grumbles, reminding him of this very fact. Getting down the flight of stairs, he finds Bucky has laid out a plate with food for him on it, and a note, to tell him he’s out in the woods with his creatures. Steve eats his food quickly, and joins him.

He doesn’t meet Bucky first, though. Instead, when he enters the bushes, following a small trail that he remembers going straight to the cliffs Bucky had shown him the last time he’d been here, he’s greeted by a growl, and sharp fangs.

“Bawteb!” he exclaims. On his first day here, he’d have been scared as Hell of the creature, saliva dripping from its weird mouth. Now, he only notices the good humor in its unseeing eyes, and the low vocalizing that he’s since learned can also mean it’s pleased. And, given the way it immediately circles Steve, rubbing itself against his legs like an overgrown cat, it obviously is.

“Yeah yeah, I’m glad to see you again too, now please, let me breathe.”

At his words, the creature only tightens the circles around Steve’s thighs, preventing him from moving even a muscle, a mischievous glint in its eyes.

“Still as much of an asshole, I see.”

The fanged dog grunts, affronted, and turns on its heels, slashing its tail once before it sprints of, presumably in Bucky’s direction. Steve follows at a much more reasonable pace, uncertain where he’s supposed to go. It takes him only a minute through the thick trees and branches before he can make out Bucky’s voice, cooing words of encouragement. He follows it all the way to a clearing, a small halo of giant trees and rocks bathed into natural light. Bucky’s there, and so is the Nipuk. He’s ambling around the clearing, obviously playing, pushing Bucky around with his head, his giant, giraffe-like legs threatening to make him fall every time they tangle. Still, he manages running without arming himself.

The moment Steve enters the clearing, he stops in his tracks, and turns his weirdly flat head toward him, sharp beak almost an arrow point. He blinks twice, and then gallops straight for him. Steve isn’t sure whether Goh-yah wants to greet him, or is charging him, but he ducks out of his path anyway, jogging until he reaches Bucky, who’s laughing so hard he’s almost crying.

“The look of panic on your face! Priceless!”

Steve huffs, but he’s smiling too. “I don’t intend to get trampled down on my second day back here, thank you.”

Shaking his head, still chuckling, Bucky leans into Steve’s personal space. “I thought you were supposed to be pretty resistant, Mr. America? Surely a Nipuk would barely get a scratch on all that perfect skin,” he comments in a drawl, one of his fingers coming to trace the skin of Steve’s bare shoulder, sending shivers along Steve’s back.

“I’m not sure I’d survive him,” he replies, his eyes never leaving Bucky, even though he can feel the Nipuk getting closer.

Bucky’s leaning forward, lips opening in a beseeching way, eyes enticing, and Steve’s getting ready to kiss the very breath out of him when a beak pierces the space through them, pushing them apart. Goh-yah stares at them with his big beady eyes, obviously confused, head turning this and that way, before he starts pushing Bucky around.

“Sorry,” Bucky groans Steve’s way, as he complies with the creature’s whims. “It’s his playtime, and he doesn’t like having to cut it short.”

Steve doesn’t really mind. He’s content as he settles on a rock outcrop, rays of light hitting half of his face and his right shoulder, looking on as Bucky runs around, getting chased by a giant mixture of a bird, a horse and a giraffe. His laughter fills the clearing, ringing clear in the silent, and Steve’s smiles.

Yes, he’s content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who else is glad to be back to Atlantis? 'cause I sure am!
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> Tomorrow... well, I'll give you the title for tomorrow: "Pitching woo".Make of that what you will ;)


	10. Pitching woo

They spend the next days nearly glued to each other. Stark, Shuri, T’Challa and Ayo come to greet him, and even though he’s glad to see their faces, he has to admit he’s focusing much more on Bucky, and the time they spend together. He doesn’t have that much of it left, so every hour he isn’t next to him feels like a waste. Not that he voices any of this to anyone, not even Bucky.

And then there’s one of those mornings, where Bucky wakes him from his deep slumber with a kiss on the forehead, a healthy breakfast, and an invitation to go swimming once they’re done. They go back to the same lake, left unchanged by the few months Steve’s been away. The waters are still crystal blue, wind softly blowing them against the shores, scattered ruins around the place, some of the columns barely peeking out of the water, others moving the stream of the cascade around.

“Race you?” Bucky asks, an echo to the last time they were here.

He’s out and into the water before Steve can even react, shedding the layers of his clothes in a hurry as he starts swimming in earnest.

Steve isn’t competitive. At least, he’d like to think he isn’t. Nat, Sam and Bruce might disagree with that statement, especially on game night. But when Bucky looks back at him, wet hair plastered on his face, a challenge in his eyes, Steve really can’t resist. So he dives, still fully clothed. He pushes himself as far as he can go, muscles straining under the water, breathing only when it’s absolutely necessary. He doesn’t even notice when he passes Bucky. He just keeps going, again and again, until finally his hands touch ground, and he has to stop, or risk hammering headfirst into the dirt.

When he turns, he finds Bucky staring at him, mouth wide open, still frozen in the middle of the lake. Steve, a bit dizzy with the rush of adrenaline, pride singing around his blood, paddles back to him almost lazily. “I won,” he says, smug. _This time,_ he wants to add.

Instead of getting offended, Bucky launches himself at Steve, his metal hand gripping his shoulders, the other coming to rest on Steve’s nape, his legs hooking around Steve’s midriff.

“You’re so fucking strong,” he mutters in between two kisses, growling like a feral animal.

Steve welcomes the attention with open arms, literally. He lets Bucky ravish him as he sees fit, supporting them in the middle of the lake. He does get a little lightheaded at some point, sinking them more into the water, and has to pause Bucky’s ministrations long enough to swim closer to the edge, where his feet touch the ground.

They’re out of breath by the time they make it to the shore, Steve sitting Bucky on the dirt as he settles himself in between his thighs, still partly submerged. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” Bucky pants, still pampering kisses all over Steve.

“Probably some really good deed in one of your past lives.”

Bucky hums. “Must have been a saint, or something.”

Ready to retort something smart, Steve opens his mouth, but any and every thought immediately flees his mind the moment Bucky’s moves turn more frenzied, his teeth clamping on Steve’s sensitive neck. He moans softly, getting closer still to Bucky, into the V of his hips, their cocks rubbing against each other, creating marvelous friction. Bucky’s eyes are hooded, when he next looks at Steve.

In a very hoarse voice, he says, “Let’s pitch some woo.”

A pause. And then Steve bursts out laughing, his whole body shaking with the force of it, hands coming to clutch at his sides. Bucky looks at him, a blush high on his cheeks, both from what they were just doing and the embarrassment of having let slip those words.

“Oh… ooooh god,” Steve swears, voice wavering with his chuckles. “Holy shit. I can’t believe this used to actually be a turn on back then. Fuck.”

Bucky kicks him in the shin with his naked foot, but Steve really can’t seem to stop laughing.

“You’re being a dick. _Again._ ” Bucky mutters, but he’s smiling, too.

It takes a few minutes more for Steve’s wheezing to subside. He devolves back into a fit every time he so much as looks at Bucky and his pout or remembers his words.

“That was just one little slip up! Dammit, Steve, give me a break!” Bucky complains, affronted.

Steve brushes the tears from the corner of his eyes, and straightens himself, though he can still feel the laughter bubble in the back of his throat. He takes a long look at Bucky – the way he’s holding himself, mostly naked but for short shorts, self-conscious and still looking glorious – and he shakes his head. “Fine,” he says. “Let’s pitch some woo.”

He gets one second of stunned silence, his words sinking into Bucky’s brain, and then the laughter sweeps him back into its grasp, and he has to turn from Bucky again.

“Fuck this,” Bucky mumbles, rising and turning away from the lake, and Steve, still soaked to the thighs. He doesn’t look really upset, a soft glint in his eyes, but it’s enough to have Steve force himself to stop laughing.

“Thought you wanted me to fuck you!” he half screams after Bucky’s retreating back, high on happiness.

Bucky turns to him with an imperious glare. “You’re being a bit too full of yourself, for a virgin, Rogers.”

 _Tha_ t definitely shuts Steve up. His jaw snaps back so fast he hears it click. “So you do want to play things dirty?” He pushes himself out of the water, and doesn’t miss the way Bucky’s eyes follow each of his movements, roaming on his glistening skin, or the way his throat works, up and down, when he gulps.

Still, he moves closer to Steve, standing tall, crossing his arms on his bare chest. Then he shakes his head. He becomes more mellow very suddenly, slips against Steve with a seductive smile on his lips, his eyelids drooping. “Actually, I wanted to DO dirty things with you, but you had to go and ruin the mood,” he whispers against Steve’s lips.

“I hope it’s not too ruined, then.” He answers so close to Bucky’s mouth that he can feel the air of his own words brush back against his face. He still won’t kiss Bucky, though, the wait slowly turning into a battle of patience.

“I’ll be the judge of that.” There’s barely any space left between their lips now. Bucky will go in for the kiss any moment.

Or he probably planned to, before the bushes on the side of the lake started shaking, drawing both of their attention.

“What…” Bucky wonders, eyes widening.

And then beaks poke out of the tree branches, enlarging into flat foreheads and beady eyes, on gangly bodies. Except it’s not just one Nipuk, this time. But a whole horde of them. And when they notice they aren’t alone around the lake, their eyes immediately come to land on Steve and Bucky.

“Shit shit shit,” Bucky swears. “Watering time, I forgot. Let’s move!”

He’s so insistent, panic in his eyes, that Steve doesn’t even ask questions before picking up his stuff and rushing after him, back onto the path that leads to Bucky’s home. They only stop once they’re halfway there, the lake long gone, catching their breaths.

“What was that about?” Steve asks, trying to shake the remaining water from his pants and wring it out of his shirt, the clingy feeling of it more uncomfortable than not now that he’s out of the water.

Bucky has stopped to put his pants back on, and looks at him with a sorry expression.

“A Nipuk flock. They come to drink to the lake at the same time every day. Totally forgot. But yeah, if you think Goh-yah is a lot to handle… Let’s say they can be dickheads, especially when they’re in a group. Don’t wanna be near any, if you can avoid it.”

Steve imagines himself standing in the middle of a Nipuk circle, and immediately shakes from the very thought. He can stand among aliens or villains any day but… those weird bird and mammal mixes, though they do seem like lovable idiots, kind of creep him out.

They’re back at Bucky’s place in no time, the sounds of wildlife more muted here than on the path, though the forest surrounds the grounds. Bucky’s still shirtless, and walking ahead, and Steve finds his gaze absorbed into admiring the way each of his muscles shifts under his skin, his eyes spending a bit longer on his left shoulder, and the nearly seamless transition with metal. As they cross the threshold, and Bucky stops, probably to ask him what he wants to do, or suggest they eat, Steve takes the opportunity to anchor against him, pampering kisses on his skin, reveling in the shivers he sends through Bucky’s back. His hands wander to the front of Bucky’s naked torso, grazing his abs, resting for a while against his nipples.

Bucky’s breath is short when he finds his voice. “So you weren’t kidding uh?”

Unable to reply, words stuck in his throat with nervous energy and arousal, Steve only shakes his head no.

With slow movements, Bucky frees himself from his arms, and turns. Then he shows Steve his brightest smile and extends his hand. “Come on, then.” He leads them to the room, every inch the same as it has been for the past few nights they’ve slept next to each other. But now that Steve knows what they’re about to do, it feels like a whole new place.

His whole body must exude his lack of confidence, and his anxiety, because Bucky stops them on the threshold, a soft look in his eyes. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he tells him, and it warms something deep into Steve’s heart.

Still, he shakes his head. Captures Bucky’s lips in his to reaffirm the words he’s about to utter. “I want to. I just don’t know how. I’m scared to mess things up.”

“You could end up being the worst person I’ve ever had sex with, Rogers, and I still wouldn’t mind,” Bucky chuckles, fond.

“Is that supposed to be reassuring?” He can feel his left eyebrow moving up with the question.

Bucky shrugs. “Kinda?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Just… tell me if I do anything wrong. Or if you want anything in particular.” A blush creeps up his cheeks when he thinks about what that might be, and he suddenly feels very dumb and very angry with himself. He can hear Nat’s voice, teasing _“If you can’t say it, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it,”_ like he’s still a fifteen-year-old or something.

Thankfully, Bucky interrupts that train of thought. “I will.” And then he turns them, and pushes Steve back, until his knees hit the side of the bed, and he falls on his ass. He hisses, feeling the wet material of his pants soak through the sheets, the cold contact annoying him.

“I’m going to get the bed all wet,” he complains, about to rise again to pull at least his pants off. A hand on his chest stops him.

“You asked me to guide, so _I_ decide when clothes come off. We’re going to get the bed all kinds of dirty anyway,” Bucky’s smile is crooked, mischievous, his eyes sparkling with desire, and Steve can feel his cock throb just from that look. He’s going to get eaten alive. “Trust me,” Bucky adds, pushing Steve again, until his back is flush against the sheets. “You’re not going to keep ‘em on that long anyway.”

And then he straddles Steve’s hips, and ravishes his mouth. Steve moans into the kiss, pushing himself on his elbows to get more of a taste of Bucky’s mouth, chasing after it when Bucky withdraws. Bucky’s hand comes down again, this time his left one, the cold sending shivers on Steve’s skin.

Misinterpreting his reaction, Bucky immediately takes his hand back, embarrassment flooding him. “Sorry…”

Before he can completely rise, Steve catches the metal hand in his, and puts it back where it just was. “I like it,” he says. When Bucky raises an eyebrow at him, as if to call out a lie, Steve nods, and applies pressure to their joined hands, shivering again at the contact.

This, out of all he’s done so far, seems to be what makes Bucky come undone. Like a fever overtaking him, he plunges back for Steve mouth, only briefly, before attacking his jaw, his neck, his collarbones like a man on a mission. Every time Steve shakes, every time he moans, every time he arches off the bed, Bucky only goes more feral, his left hand making sure Steve says plastered to the bed, the show of strength only making Steve’s cock grow harder.

He really wants to touch Bucky as well, maybe return the favor, but the very moment he tries to move his hand, aiming for Bucky’s hair, Bucky’s free palm clasps his and pins it above Steve’s head. Another moan, louder than all the previous ones, shakes Steve to his very core.

“You’re going to destroy me,” he whimpers, trying to open his eyes, getting a good look at Bucky.

He looks almost unhinged, pupils blown wide, his bun half coming undone, his cheeks flushed from desire, mouth open on soft pants and grunts. Steve nearly comes then and there. He has to clench his fists as hard as possible and grit his teeth before the edge subsides. Coming in a couple of minutes after Bucky gave him a blowjob was already embarrassing enough. If he came untouched, just from a few kisses and an intense look, he’s sure he’d never live it down.

“Good,” Bucky mutters.

Finally, after long minutes of restrained kisses, Bucky moves from his throat and mouth. He releases Steve’s hand with a stern look that doesn’t need words, and pushes his mouth lower, until it’s grazing a nipple, teeth creating marvelous friction against it even through the fabric of his shirt. Steve jolts. The touch sends sensations straight through his body and to his dick, and he throws his head back, toes curling.

Bucky chuckles, a hot breath on Steve’s nipple. “Well well well, someone is sensitive,” he comments, and proceeds to pick Steve apart via his chest. Steve is so distracted by the pleasure coursing through every inch of him that he barely notices Bucky working on his fly, and inching his jeans down his thighs. He only becomes aware of it when Bucky gets bored playing through layers, and paws at Steve’s tight and soaked t-shirt until it comes off, not missing a beat before he attacks Steve’s nipples again, only changing his target this time.

Time seems to stretch as Bucky takes care of him, Steve’s consciousness going in and out of focus every time he threatens to spill from his ministrations. When, finally, seconds have morphed into minutes and he feels like he’s about to give up on retaining his last shred of pride, Bucky stops, almost abruptly.

Steve panics. He rises, sitting instead of lying down, eyes wide. “Did I do something wrong? Are you okay?”

Unmoved, Bucky places one of his palms on Steve’s lips to seal them. “Everything’s fine. I’m fine. I just can’t feel my lips anymore.”

When his gaze moves to said lips, Steve has to admit he can understand why. They’re covered in spit, and so red they look raw. He’d probably feel bad for Bucky if it didn’t turn the Hell out of him. So instead he bites at the tender skin of Bucky’s hand until he withdraws it, and kisses those swollen lips, gently.

Emboldened by the effect he seems to have on Bucky, it’s his turn to let his hands wander. Shyly, at first, finger grazing the shell of Bucky’s ear, noticing the shiver it sends down his spine, then plunging in his hair, getting rewarded with a gasp, and Bucky closing his eyes against the pleasure. Steve’s other hand moves lower, and lower still, until he reaches the soft fabric of Bucky’s Atlantean’s pants. He doesn’t stop, though, only continues down, until he can brush his knuckles against the outline of Bucky’s erection.

Another gasp, ringing harder in the silence of the room. Bucky’s whole body tenses, his eyes fluttering open, as if he doesn’t know whether he wants to stop Steve or not. But one clench of his fingers in Bucky’s hair, and he’s pliable again, letting his lids fall back closed, abandoning himself in Steve’s arms. The amount of trust Bucky is displaying nearly makes Steve cry. Instead, he focuses on rewarding that very trust.

Slowly, at first, he lets his fingers wander around Bucky’s fabric clad dick. He tests out different gestures, and their effects. Adds or subtracts pressure, as he sees fit. He plays it by ear – literally. With every soft moan, he adjusts his grip, making sure to hit just the right spot, the right rhythm. When he tries to actually accelerate, though, Bucky hisses, pushing his head up from where it had fallen back. “Too much clothing,” he grunts, and promptly peels himself out of both his pants and shorts.

Steve is left staring at his naked form, mouth agape. He had noticed that Bucky’s thighs were strong, but this… He looks like a Greek god sculpted straight out of marble, ass rounded, thighs so thick they could choke you – oh, and what an idea that is. The only thing amiss compared to all those ancient statues is his straining dick, precum dripping onto his abs.

“Come back here,” Steve orders, surprised to find actual authority in his voice, and even more when Bucky complies without even a smart retort. He’s back in Steve’s lap in no time, and Steve doesn’t miss one beat before he’s lavishing attention on Bucky’s cock once again, trying to find what will make him tick the most. Turns out that tightening his fingers just around the rim of the head seems to work wonders on him.

Steve keeps at it for minutes, eager, before Bucky stops him again. “’M about to come,” he mumbles, eyes half-lidded, only making Steve want to accelerate to finally get him over the edge. But that doesn’t seem to be Bucky’s plan.

Instead, he pushes himself off Steve’s lap only long enough to retrieve a small bottle, uncork it, and spread some of the salve on his fingers. _Lube_ , Steve realizes. He unconsciously tenses. He’s never played with that part of himself, doesn’t even know if he’ll like the sensation, but somehow, if it’s for Bucky, it all seems possible.

Except, once he’s back on the bed, Bucky doesn’t get his fingers anywhere near Steve’s parts. He reaches behind himself instead, and, very, very slowly, sinks a finger in.

“Oh.” The breath is out before he even registers making it, eyes wide as he watches Bucky work himself open.

That makes Bucky stop, a bit awkwardly. “You wanted to bottom?” he asks, like it’s no big deal, and Steve can feel the flush overtake his cheeks.

“I… no. I don’t… I don’t know.”

Bucky chuckles softly. From where he is, Steve can only see his hand starting back its earlier rhythm, or hear the squelching sounds his back and forth makes. “Don’t worry, we’ve got time to try those things out,” he sways a bit as he says the words, and Steve catches him with one arm around his middle. Bucky thanks him with a small smile, and continues. “Trust me, for now, it’ll be easier that way.”

And then he’s pushing Steve around – again – his wet fingers leaving trails along Steve’s skin, grunting and complaining when he notices Steve’s pants are still on.

There’s nothing sexy about the way he chucks them away, wiggling on the bed, trying as best as he can to get the last of his clothes off, and fast. Still, it doesn’t seem to deter Bucky. If anything, once Steve is finally naked, just as he is, he freezes, gawking.

The serum didn’t just enhance the other parts of his body. Steve knows he’s… bigger than average. The thought has been on his mind quite a few times, even when he was single. Right now, as Bucky gapes, he feels particularly self-conscious. He has a half mind to cover himself with his hands, but Bucky speaks again, distracting him.

“Hadn’t realized you were… that big, when I…” he coughs, probably referring to their previous unchaste encounter. “Damn, I’m gonna need more prep.”

Steve winces. “… sorry?”

With a glare, Bucky gets his hand back behind himself, a new healthy dose of lube on his fingers. Then his eyes turn lascivious, trailing over Steve’s body, and especially his cock. “Please don’t be.”

Steve flushes anew.

As he works, Bucky’s face goes slack with pleasure, and Steve suddenly feels left out. Though he enjoys watching, he’s growing restless, thigh jolting. “Can I help?” he asks, probably too shyly for what they’re about to do.

Seemingly incapable of finding his voice, lips enclosed in his teeth, Bucky only nods. So Steve takes the vial, pours some more liquid on his own fingers, warms them before he gathers Bucky closer, making the angle he was pumping at change, drawing a soft moan out of his lips.

“Okay?” Steve asks, his fingers grazing the crack of Bucky’s ass.

Given the very enthusiastic nod he gets in return, he isn’t too worried. Still, he lowers himself carefully, until he’s at Bucky’s rim, right next to his fingers. He enters him so slowly it’s torture to still his hand, and in the end it’s Bucky who jolts him, pushing back until Steve’s finger is all the way there. They take a minute to find a speed they can agree on, laughing at their poorly calculated attempt, but neither of them complains. A minute more, and Bucky is a writhing mess again.

“Okay, okay, enough,” he says, his brow damp with sweat, his breathing short, his pupils dilated. Steve complies immediately, and settles back against the headboard, anticipation running both hot and cold into his veins. He can feel his heart beat right into his ears and against his temples, and he has to swallow the lump in his throat when Bucky straddles him again.

“Steve.” He only realizes he closed his eyes when he has to open them again, looking at Bucky’s earnest face. “You sure you wanna do this?”

He nods. Still, Bucky stays put.

“I need to hear you say it.”

Voice rough with arousal and anxiety, Steve does. “I’m sure.”

The small smile that blooms on Bucky’s face isn’t halfway as wicked as it ought to be. Not at first, at least. Then it morphs, desire glinting into his eyes, as he gets closer still. “Good,” he whispers against Steve’s skin.

And then he sinks on Steve’s dick.

It’s slow. Excruciatingly so. But it’s not like Steve would dare to rush things, or even wants to. He thinks if Bucky did, he’d just come immediately. And he hopes he won’t, hopes he’ll at least last a couple of minutes. That should be enough to have the both of them orgasm, given how on edge they already are from just foreplay and preparation.

Their breaths echo into the room as, finally, Bucky settles himself, Steve’s cock sheathed all the way. Pants, mostly, a few moans when one of them inadvertently moves, as they both try to adjust. Bucky, to Steve’s size, and Steve, to the new sensations coursing through his body, engulfing his mind, making him see stars. And then Bucky moves, and his world shatters all over again.

He must have passed out, only for a few seconds, because by the time he comes back to himself, Bucky is fucking himself on his dick in earnest, hands splayed on Steve’s chest, grunting and moaning every so often. The vision is nearly enough to make Steve spill. “Holy fuck,” he swears, voice raw.

Bucky opens one eye, almost lazily, to gaze at him. He tries to smile, but he must hit a good spot on his next descent, because instead his mouth goes slack, a breathy whine tumbling out of his lips.

Their bodies, breaths, sweat, and hearts mingling, it doesn’t take much for them to orgasm. Bucky comes first, with a broken wail, contracting around Steve, and he follows almost immediately, impressed by the fact he even lasted that long. He’s almost embarrassed that their first time was so short. Almost. Because right now, he’s too numb and too happy to really care.

He braces Bucky in his arms, gently, wipes away a stray strand of hair that’s fallen across his face slick with sweat. “You good?” he asks.

Bucky hums. “More than good.” He pecks Steve’s lips quickly, his smile reaching from ear to ear. There’s something hypnotic about it, and Steve finds himself staring long into the afternoon, until they both fall asleep, exhausted.

He wakes to a growling stomach. Surprisingly, not his. Bucky’s still snoring next to him, hair mussed, body tacky with drying sweat and come. Steve grimaces. That can’t be comfortable. Not that he is much better. Some of Bucky’s seed also painted his own skin, and the sheets are sticking to him. Gross.

Slowly, he gets out of bed, making sure not to disturb Bucky. And then he goes to take a bath. He draws it out a little, enjoying the warm water on his strained muscles. He never thought sex would make him feel like after one of his particularly hard training sessions, but here he is. At the vague thought of sex, images of earlier resurface, and Steve finds himself blushing, and putting his face in his hands, like he’s somehow the heroine of a silly rom com.

Sounds, in the room next door. Bucky must be waking. Steps echo until they’re at the door, until Bucky is getting inside the bathroom, sleep clinging to his face, quickly replaced by a look of satisfaction and pure happiness when he sees Steve. He comes to sit next to the bathtub, his flesh arm resting on the side of it, chin propped onto it. “You alright in there?”

Steve raises his eyes to actually meet Bucky’s. “I… yeah, I think so.”

Bucky’s smile extends, predatory. “Did I just fuck the brains out of you?” He sounds so smug Steve would feel offended, if that wasn’t _exactly_ what he’d just done.

“Maybe.”

Bucky’s laugh rings through the whole house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally... the SmutTM
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> See you guys tomorrow!


	11. Treasures

Steve only remembers Kida’s invitation a couple of days later, as his departure grows near. He’d been spending all of his time with Bucky, either helping around with the creatures, or enjoying Bucky’s company, in more ways than one. Stark had come by at some point, and promptly left, complaining about them acting like they were on their honeymoon. They’d only left the haven of the forest once or twice, on random errands, or to get some food.

But now he finds himself at the foot of the palace stairs again, feeling like a fool, Bucky at his side, trying to reassure him all will be alright.

“You know this isn’t a test, right?” Bucky asks, bewildered.

Steve dabs the sweat from his brow, shakes his nerves out, and pulls the unaffected mask he usually wears in public on his features. “Yeah,” he breathes.

Bucky’s still staring at him. “That is… impressive. Scary as fuck. But impressive.”

Steve is so nervous he can barely manage a half smile in reply.

They climb the steps hand in hand, getting greeted by members of the royal guard, and shown to the dining room almost immediately. It isn’t as grand as the hall is, with its pool and lavish colors. It’s even fairly small, for a royal room. But given how generous the queen seems to be with her people – how close to them she is – he isn’t surprised by her place being more human-sized. He just wishes that the thinking was more common, with people in power. But he won’t go down that train of thought. Right now isn’t the time to think about everything wrong with the surface.

Milo is the one to greet them. He’s standing beside the table, looking out through the open squares of the wall that survey the city, hands clasped behind his back, a thoughtful expression on his face. He turns as he hears them coming, smile spreading on his lips, waving his hand around in a greeting. “I’m glad you two could come! Welcome, welcome to our humble adobe,” he laughs, waving them to sit around the table. “Kida will be joining us shortly.”

Steve cocks his head to the side, pulling Bucky’s chair for him, delighting in the fond expression that gets him, before sitting in his own. “And not your daughter?”

“Ah… Shirin is out playing with some friends right now, I fear she’ll not be back for lunch.”

Steve tries not to show his disappointment. He really likes kids, more than he usually likes adults. They’re carefree, don’t trouble themselves with politics, and usually just want a fist bump and an autograph before they go on their merry way. Some of them even hug him. He’s sure Shirin would have been a delight to have at the table.

Steps sound in the corridor, and Steve turns to find Queen Kida, walking up to her husband, dropping a quick kiss on his lips before she greets them with a bow. They both reply in kind, Steve still impressed by the charisma she exudes. There’s something about Kidagakash that’s hard to describe. Almost magnetic, and yet never threatening. He likes that about her. He hopes that one day, people will look up at him the way her subjects look up at her.

“It’s good you both could make it. Milo’s been bothering me about asking you all sorts of questions from the moment you stepped back down here,” she half whispers, conspiratorial. Milo obviously hears, and tries to appear mock offended, but he’s laughing and nodding.

“I don’t get to go to the surface as much as I’d want to,” he says, and when Kida throws him a sad look, something breaks deep into Steve’s heart. “But,” Milo immediately continues, taking his wife’s hand in his, squeezing it, and throwing her a glance that tells Steve they’ve had that very conversation more than once. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’m just too curious. It’s in my nature.”

Kida chuckles. “And look where that got you.”

As the entrées get served, Milo starts to drill Steve with questions about the current world. He wasn’t joking about being curious. His eyes sparkle when Steve tells him about smartphones and all they can do, miniaturized computers at the tip of your fingers, or what medicine is slowly coming to as research grows.

“Kida dear, I fear they’re going to catch up to us if we aren’t careful enough.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but Steve thinks there might be a spark of truth to his words. Humans are evolving so fast they might do the very mistakes that lead Atlantis where it is. He hopes they don’t.

“Don’t worry,” Bucky chimes in. “We’ve got Shuri and Stark to make sure we’re always one step ahead.”

The conversation devolves on more random subjects, Steve learning more about what Kida and Milo do on their day to day basis, beside raising their daughter, and how Atlantis as a whole works. Bucky is far more silent than he usually is, but Steve has to remind himself he’d always seemed like a private and shy person. He really doesn’t mind. He also likes listening to Milo recount his adventures with his friends and Kida when they were back on the surface, or spin legends into reality, like Steve’s mother used to, when she told him tales before sleep.

At some point, Steve even remembers the stone he found on his last mission. And though he loathes to part with it, cherishing each and every piece of Atlantis he’d be able to bring back up to the surface with him, he still places it back into Kida’s and Milo’s safe hands. They thank him profusely, explaining the stone had been taken up by one of the few Atlanteans that went to the surface, who’d lost it in a gamble. Steve is glad to know Sam nearly dying to save his stupid ass at least allowed the Queen of Atlantis to have a piece of her cherished island back.

They’re starting on dessert when the atmosphere suddenly tenses. Milo makes an inconspicuous comment about rebuilding the columns that had been destroyed during the HYDRA attack, something he obviously doesn’t mean to affect Steve with, since he’s mostly geeking about all the engraving he’ll have to do, but still, Steve freezes. Everyone seems to feel it, Bucky straightening beside him, his eyes going carefully to Steve, Kida turning to him as well, and Milo, surprisingly, reading the room very easily, and suddenly shutting up. Which only makes it more awkward.

After a long beat of silence, everyone looking at each other like uttering a word would make the ceiling collapse on their head, Steve heaves a sigh. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice grave.

Kida shakes her head, smiling softly. “Steve. We already told you. We don’t blame you.”

“I… I know. And I’m grateful.” He breathes in, slowly. “But I still blame myself.”

“Please don’t.”

“I almost destroyed your city,” he pleads, unsure what to do when guilt is so clearly etched into his heart, and yet the very woman who should be angry at him isn’t. Steve doesn’t know how to not face his responsibilities. He can’t do this.

To his surprise, Kida outright laughs at his words. “Trust me, you did not.” She throws a glance in Milo’s direction, who just shrugs, smiling. “Let me tell you a story.” Her voice goes low, like the one of all storytellers, just before they take you on an adventure.

And what an adventure this is. Milo and Kida alternate talking, Milo starting with his work at the museum, the encounter with Whitmore and his crew, his trip to what he firmly believed to be Atlantis. Steve shivers when he mentions the Leviathan, and how it had easily teared down a whole fleet. And then both their point of views merge, when Kida tells him about the strange man she found hurt in the caves near her home. Her voice breaks when she mentions how Atlantis was dying, and her father, blinded with rage for the outside world.

Steve’s anger rises, when it comes to the betrayal. He can’t quite focus on the information that the giant sphere spinning into the sky is the island’s and people’s life force, and that it is, somehow, _ALIVE_. Instead, he’s superposing the image of Rourke with that of Red Skull or Rumlow, a familiar itch in his veins at hearing what he’d done to Kida, and what he’d tried to do to the whole island. Condemning its people. Stealing its only power without a care to what would happen to the hundreds of innocent lives perishing from it. Just because he could.

He feels like the little guy in the back of alleys getting his ass kicked by stronger guys all over again. And he hates it.

And even though the tale takes a hopeful turn – a _happy_ turn, he tells himself, because this isn’t just some story, it is THEIR story, and yet here they still are, growing, flourishing – there’s a bittersweet aftertaste that he can’t quite scrape off his tongue.

When Kida and Milo look at him with hopeful eyes, like what they just told him should make it all better, he can’t help but feel bad for them. “HYDRA nearly did the exact same thing to you. If I hadn’t been here, they wouldn’t have even known there was anything to search for.”

Strangely, it’s Milo that grows angry. He glares at Steve, mouth twisted, his words harsh. “If you hadn’t been here, they’ve have come across the information another way, and we would have been stranded, not knowing what to expect, and greatly outnumbered. We might have been decimated.” He sighs, and relaxes. “You made a mistake, yes. And I’m glad you own up to it. But you also saved us, Steve. Don’t think we aren’t grateful for that.”

The words reach something buried deep within Steve’s guts. Something he hasn’t allowed himself to look at since he started as Captain America. Something that strangely feels like forgiveness.

Bucky nudges his foot under the table, and Steve realizes they must be expecting an answer. “Then I’ll try not to torture myself about my implication in what could have been a disaster,” he says, immediately wincing as the words tumble out of him.

“But definitely wasn’t,” Milo retorts with a wink.

Tension seems to bleed away from the table at his words, a soft laugh escaping the queen, Bucky visibly relaxing. He smiles at Steve, soft, and takes his hand under the table. Laces their fingers together. It’s a touch so delicate Steve wonders if Bucky thinks he might break if handled too forcefully. And maybe he would. Maybe here, in the safety of the palace, of Atlantis, surrounded by people he respects and who respect him in return, and don’t expect much of him, except maybe a smile, he could shatter into a thousand pieces. He just wonders what the person he’d build back to be looks like.

*

“I want to take you somewhere,” Bucky says.

It’s the eve of Steve’s departure. He’s been in Atlantis for close to two weeks now, but Fury called. He didn’t ordered Steve to come back. Not exactly. But he strongly implied he’d have to. Encouraged him to. The news felt like a knife to the gut, even worse when he told Bucky he needed to leave. The heartbreak on his face… Steve still can’t quite deal with the memory of it.

The words are reminiscent of the time Bucky took him to the lake for the first time. It seems like years ago already. It’s barely been a couple of months.

Steve agrees blindly. It’s not like he plans on being separated from Bucky’s side until the very last second. He tries to enjoy each moment to the fullest while he can, but he can’t help most of them being tainted with the very idea that, in a few days, he won’t be here to do any of this any longer. That he’ll trade this life, trade Bucky, for the safety of a world that never quite cared for him like it should have. And yet he doesn’t feel as bad about it as he thought he would. It hurts like crazy, yes. Being torn apart. But he’s also looking forward to seeing Sam, Nat and Bruce again, to knocking people out with the shield, to growling at asshole politicians or making hospital rounds for kids in need. He only hates himself more for it.

Turns out Bucky is taking him farther away than just the lake. He hoists himself into his aktirak, letting Steve follow, but pushing Bawteb – even though he knows it’s just a pet name, Steve has come to calling the fanged dog this in his head – aside when he tries to climb in after them. “Not this time,” Bucky admonishes gently.

The creature answers with a low whine, and then turns away from them, as if making a point that he never wanted to follow anyway.

The city sights are just as grandiose as ever. They soar through the air like it’s nothing, passing over the cliff of the main island, and above the lava, rife with beasts and dangers, toward the smaller floating isles that punctuate the sky. Steve gets a good look at them for the first time. Some are inhabited, small villages in their own right, or just one house and a family, waving at them as they pass. Some are only houses in ruins, or nothing at all. Other flourish with vegetation, looking like they’re about to spill over with it. Bucky makes them land on one of those. Before they come down, Steve only manages to see it’s a small thing, no human constructions in sight. And then they’re swallowed by a couple of giant trees, and he can’t see anything anymore.

The silence in which he follows Bucky as they dismount is almost religious. They cross through the grove on a path that looks like it has seen better days, vines tangling at their feet and above their heads. Bucky pushes through with determination. Steve wonders what might be so important, to get that expression on his face in the first place.

And then they get there. And he understands.

Before him is a carpet of multicolored flowers, scattered all over, petals softly blowing in the wind, stems bobbing around. It spreads forward as though infinite, stopping only with a cliff, beyond which Steve can’t see, but is sure there’s the lava sea. There’s not a trace of human presence. Not a path. Not an object lying around. Only flowers. Again and again and again. Species gathered in clusters of colors, while others more spontaneous ones try to mix themselves everywhere. It’s yellows and purples and reds and blues, all different sizes and shapes and forms. Painting an absolute masterpiece before his eyes.

And the smell… he doesn’t even know how to describe the smell. There are scents he never got to experience in the upper world, inherent to the island. Belatedly, he wonders if some of the flowers are like the one he saw on his first day here. Carnivorous plants masquerading as innocent beauties. And yet he can’t imagine any of these being anything but peaceful.

Beside them, the only other living presence are insects, and probably creatures. Though there are only strange butterfly-looking things swiftly migrating from stem to stem, he does hear some scuttling or some chirps, low in the grass. He just can’t see what they belong to.

It’s a safe haven enclosed in another safe haven. Steve isn’t sure why, or what, but something in him shifts, like it has found its rightful place.

“You like it?” Bucky asks, looking proud of himself as his eyes shift from the place to Steve and back to the meadow.

Steve can’t do anything but nod.

With a breath, Bucky sits himself down, just at the edge of the carpet of flowers. Steve follows, and watches as Bucky’s fingers graze one, and then another, ever so gently. Being as careful, if not more, as he is with the animals in his care. His gaze has gone unfocused, as if turned inward, and he’s humming something. An old song. Steve thinks he can recognize the melody, some tune that used to be popular on the radio back in the day. Bucky’s voice is so low, and Steve is so distracted by the specific melody of this place, that he isn’t quite able to focus on it to make sure.

“I used to come here often, y’know,” Bucky says, gaze sweeping further, taking in the immensity of the meadow. He keeps talking, not really waiting for Steve to answer. “At first. I was so lost. Didn’t know where I belonged. What to do. Queen Kida and Milo… they’d welcomed me with open arms, and smiles, just like today. But I still felt out of place.”

Steve can relate. Even though Atlantis feels more like home than home usually does, the feeling of not belonging is one he’s held close to him for a long time. Not belonging in the army. Not belonging in the present. Not belonging among the other superheroes. Not belonging even here, no matter how much he wishes to. Atlantis is such a close-knitted community that he sometimes feels blasphemous, wanting to be a part of it. The dread never really vanishes.

“But this place. Well, you can see. It brought me peace, when I needed it. My own little secret garden,” he whispers the words in Steve’s direction, taking his hand and lacing their fingers like he’d done earlier. Sharing his past, and his present, with Steve.

“I get why you like it,” are the only words Steve manages to utter, throat locked. So instead, he kisses Bucky’s knuckles, each one in turn, a little thank you in each trace of his lips. For what? He isn’t even sure himself. For his trust, maybe. And for everything else as well.

Though he must sense the intensity of Steve’s gaze, Bucky keeps talking. “I asked Shuri, once. Wanted to know why no one came here, or had constructed anything on this island.” Steve’s curious too. But he doesn’t need to push Bucky for him to continue. “Turns out this is some kind of sacred ground. Not like… holy,” he says, making air quotes, “but just… meaningful. Used to be a cemetery, something unassuming. But when Kida came into power, all those flowers sprouted from the soil. As if celebrating life. Hers, especially. So no one dares really come here.”

Steve’s worry spikes at Bucky’s words. “Shouldn’t we leave, then?” he asks, even though he definitely doesn’t want to.

With a shake of his head, Bucky chuckles. “I asked Queen Kida about it. She said she didn’t mind. Was actually delighted I had found a special place for myself on the island. She said it meant I was part of Atlantis, too.” There’s a small, crystalline tear at the corner of his eye, and Steve wipes it before it can trail down Bucky’s cheek. They smile at each other, understanding strong, even without words.

They spend a long time just lounging around, admiring the view. Bucky tells Steve about the different kinds of flowers. If they only grow on the island or not, their names, and their medical properties, if they have some, and whether or not Steve would risk his life coming near any of them. Turns out that, beside making you dizzy if you sniff some of them too long, they’re all harmless.

“It’s so beautiful here,” the words leave Steve’s mouth in a breath.

He doesn’t just mean this meadow, and Bucky must catch on, because there’s a sadness that fleets in his eyes, quickly replaced, but there nonetheless.

When he kisses Steve, it’s with all the passion of a drowning man. Steve’s hands automatically go to the small of Bucky’s back, dragging him closer as they devour each other, alternating between short and sweet pecks and hungry making out. As though the world will stop if they don’t kiss each other in the next minute. As though it’ll crumble around them if they even so much as part for a second.

But part they do, still, needing to breath somewhat. Steve’s hands are snagging under Bucky’s clothes, soft fabric unwrapping from his torso as Steve’s fingers roam his back, from the bottom of his spine to his shoulders blades, spending a while thumbing at the scar on his left shoulder, appreciating the contrast of hot and cold between flesh and metal.

Bucky’s hands are more adventurous, trailing down down down until they meet with Steve’s dick, starting to strain against his pants. He shudders at the contact, even through them. Leans back as Bucky chases his lips. “Maybe we shouldn’t,” he starts, cut off by his own moan as Bucky’s fingers graze him, working on his zipper. “You did say this place was sacred,” he tries again.

“I really don’t think anyone will mind,” Bucky teases, far too distracted by what he’s doing to pay any heed to what Steve is saying.

Honestly, Steve doesn’t really mind that much either. They’re alone on a beautiful island. If the gods want to judge them for having a little fun while they’re at it, then so be it.

He realizes he’s faded out when he gets abruptly dragged back to reality, Bucky’s hand around his cock, and his lips at Steve’s neck. It seems to be a favorite spot of his. Steve has had his skin molested more than once by Bucky’s teeth in the past week, and even though he isn’t anywhere near mad about it – quite the contrary, in fact – he’s still glad for his accelerated healing, especially on the few occasions they have to meet other people.

“Bucky,” he whispers, loving the feel of hands on his skin. Only letting one of his palms support his own weight as he leans back while Bucky goes to town, he snakes his other into Bucky’s hair, and tugs. The effect is immediate, Bucky gasping, his hand on Steve’s dick faltering only slightly, eyes rolling back into his head. So Steve clenches his fist some more, untangles the long strands from where they’re knotted at Bucky’s nape. They spill like a cascade, shining bright into the sun, colorful reflections waving around from the decor that surrounds them. Steve doesn’t get to appreciate the vision long before Bucky starts working on him again with new vigor, twisting his fingers in a mind-boggling way, making very sure to set each and every nerve ending of Steve’s dick on fire.

“Fuck,” he swears. “I’m close.”

At that, Bucky immediately stops what he’s doing. A wicked smile paints his lips as he kisses Steve some more. He nearly tears Steve’s shirt off him, and then they’re shedding their clothes in a flurry of movements, leaving them naked in the soft grass, panting against each other’s skin.

Steve is wondering about whether or not he should blow Bucky – he liked that very much, even with Steve’s fumbling inexperience, a few days ago – when he sees Bucky is already reaching behind himself, probably ready to start his preparation. His hand shoots out on its own accord, steeling Bucky’s movements. And then they’re left to stare at each other, Steve’s eyes widening as the words escape his mind.

Voicing what he wants suddenly makes him very embarrassed. He knows he’s blushing, can feel it from the heat of his skin, and he stutters a few times. Thankfully, Bucky is nothing but patient with him.

In the end, he only manages two words. “My turn,” he says.

At first, there is zero reaction on Bucky’s end. Steve can see the cogs turning in his brain, trying to work out the meaning of the cryptic message. And then it clicks, and Bucky’s eyes and mouth widen, desire spreading on his face like a torrent. “You sure?” he asks, breathless, invading Steve’s personal space even more than a second ago, skin against skin in a gentle and yet excruciating friction.

Steve nods. “Certain.”

It’s a bit awkward, for a while. Steve doesn’t know if he should move or not. Bucky starts toward him, his right hand traveling down Steve’s back, before he stops, abruptly. “I don’t have…” he never finishes his sentence, leaving Steve hanging. Instead, fire is blazing anew in his pupils. His voice is raw when he orders. “Turn around for me.”

Steve complies like the good army boy he is.

He feels exposed, here, in the open air, lying down his front in the grass, his dick trapped between their shed clothes and his abs, ass in full display for Bucky. But the exhilaration far overcomes the shame, as he feels Bucky’s eyes rake on his silhouette, and hears his appreciative hum.

“I could nearly circle your waist with my spread hands,” Bucky whispers, as if it’s a secret, said hands going to paw at Steve’s skin, spreading around his middle, Bucky’s thumbs in his back, the rest at his front, trying to make them touch, and failing. But not by much.

Before they can dwell on that revelation, though, Steve hears Bucky shuffle around. He means to turn back, to see what he’s doing, but Bucky’s right hand comes to rest at the small of his back, not quite pinning, but there all the same. Steve understands the message. He doesn’t move.

Being at Bucky’s mercy is a strange feeling. He’s so used to always being in control, no matter how nervous he feels, that relinquishing it for even a minute makes him feel queasy. But he trusts Bucky. With his body as well as his life.

A cold thumb presses on his left ass cheek, and Steve shakes with the sensation. “I can take it,” he whimpers, wanting Bucky to do something already. They may not have lube, but he doesn’t mind a little hurt, if it means he gets to experience this with Bucky. He’ll deal.

The growl that echoes down his back is much closer than he expects it. Bucky’s face is so close to him that Steve is barely surprised when he takes a bite out of his ass. He jolts, still, the sensation sending him reeling.

And then he nearly blacks out. Because Bucky isn’t fingering him. He’s _rimming_ him.

Steve chokes on a sob at first contact, the sensation too much and too little all at once. Bucky’s tongue lavishes down his crack, and then twists against his hole, repeating the motion a couple of times before he finally, slowly, pushes into Steve. Mimicking the back and forth of their coupling, Bucky makes love to him with his tongue. Thoroughly. So thoroughly, in fact, that by the time Bucky seems to be done, Steve is shaking all over, goosebumps climbing up and down his back, fists clenching against the earth, feeling like he’s ready to implode.

So when Bucky asks, voice raw and jaw probably aching, his fingers up Steve’s ass barely registering in Steve’s brain, “You ready?” Steve can’t do anything but nod.

The sensation isn’t comfortable, per se. And it definitely isn’t pleasant, at least at first. It feels like a little bit too much, a little bit too soon. But Bucky is cooing in his ear, urging him to relax, and Steve abandons himself to that voice, and the expert fingers that go with it. He whimpers when a cold, metallic hand wraps around his dick, gives it a few tugs, anchoring him back into pleasure.

His mind is blurry with too many feelings. With the scents of the flowers, the feel of grass and strewn around clothes beneath his belly, and of Bucky’s hands and skin against his back, the echo of the island’s noises and of Bucky’s soft growls.

And then Bucky starts moving, and Steve comes apart.

He throws his head back, the awkwardness fading as friction sparks real pleasure in his bones, Bucky immediately latching onto the exposed skin to scatter it with bruises. His moves are powerful, slow and deep alternating with faster and shallower in a pattern that’s indiscernible. It’s maddening. Maddeningly enjoyable.

Steve is thankful they’re alone on a deserted island when he realizes the very vocal moans that are shaking the air around them are his, and his alone. They’re torn from him before he can even register he’s making them, sounds of wild pleasure. Bucky is always the silent one, during sex. And yet right now, Steve can hear him, more than before. Like he’s holding back. So Steve does something he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of even an hour ago, when he was too shy to even be sure he wanted to try any of this with Bucky. He clenches his ass, and with it his rim.

Bucky’s rhythm falters. Wavers. On his skin, Bucky’s jaw comes unhinged, a very low cry tumbling out of his lips and onto Steve’s back. It radiates through his whole skin, going straight to his dick, and Steve has to focus on any awful image he can muster to keep from coming from the very sound of Bucky’s enjoyment.

“Ass,” Bucky growls. It’s probably meant as an insult, but all Steve can think is that it is awfully relevant to what they are doing right now, which, in turn, makes him chuckle.

A controlling hand at the base of his neck. Tightening, but not choking. “Stop.”

Bucky’s voice is so authoritative Steve’s laughter dissolves, replaced swiftly by arousal at the low order, tension running up his back muscles as Bucky’s hand softens. “Good,” he whispers. A soft praise that Steve drinks up like a man stranded in the desert.

And then he starts fucking Steve in earnest. If Steve had thought whatever he was doing to him before was already a slow descent into oblivion, this is pure torture, most enjoyable agony. Each slam of Bucky inside him rattles his very bones, each hurt a comfort, each new bruise on his skin a memento. Pleasure builds inside him as Bucky plows through him with heavy grunts, and Steve finds himself on the edge so soon it surprises even himself. He spills without a sound, lips opened wide on a silent moan, feeling Bucky slam into him with reckless abandon.

Bucky comes a minute later, struggling to hold himself up with one hand on Steve’s back and the other on the ground, shaking with his release. So Steve catches his hand, and allows Bucky to lie on his back, heaving with the strain of what he just did.

The withdrawal is… not the funniest part. Steve feels tacky with sweat when Bucky pushes himself up and back, and the come trickling down his thighs feels weird. He doesn’t really dare move, either. Bucky hasn’t said a word in a while, and Steve wonders if maybe he’s done something wrong. He keeps blinking, until his eyes focus, and he can see a hand waving before them.

“You okay in there?” Bucky asks, concerned, lowering himself beside Steve, his face flushed and breathing still ragged.

Steve blinks some more, uncertain how to respond. He settles for, “I think you broke me,” because it isn’t too far from the truth. His brain is silent, truly silent, for the first time in what feels like forever. There are only the sensations left by their lovemaking, phantom prints on his skin.

“I hope not,” Bucky laughs.

He helps Steve right himself. He feels like a newborn foal, his legs nearly giving out under him, and Bucky has to help him walk to a stream not far ahead. It’s just as beautiful as the meadow is, shaded by the giant trees, clear water running through the grass. They settle themselves inside the river, Bucky sitting on a rock, Steve sitting directly in the bank, head lowered on Bucky’s knee, loving the feeling of having his hair pet, and of their bodies still so in tune with each other.

Right now, the silence doesn’t feel overbearing. He welcomes it, stretching between them like an understanding.

Bucky finds the exact spot that Steve loves having traced, down near his nape, and he falls harder against Bucky’s skin, letting the stream wash their coupling away as he’s welcomed into Bucky’s open arms.

He opens his eyes, and finds Bucky gazing down at him, fond. But there’s an intensity to his gaze that usually isn’t there, a fire burning bright in his eyes. Steve is about to ask what it is when words come tumbling out of Bucky’s mouth. “Moh-in mat-e-kik.”

The Atlantean feels even more foreign with Steve’s brain being so sluggish, but he knows he never learned those words. They aren’t even somewhat familiar, and he puzzles over them, eyebrows drawing together, before Bucky chuckles, and lowers himself so he can kiss Steve’s lips. “I love you.”

Steve freezes. This, he understands. The words spiral into his mind, going in and out of focus. Bucky’s demeanor turns from cute and loving to reserved, like he’s waiting for someone to smack him across the face. It’s what prompts Steve to sort his thoughts out, to let the happiness he’d been trying to lock away spill into his heart, and then into the rest of his body, unaltered and unstoppable.

He takes Bucky’s hand, pushes himself on his knees so he’s closer to Bucky’s perplexed face. “I love you, too,” he says, and it rings so right he wants to cry.

They kiss for a long, long time. Unhurried. Unabashed. It seems like there’s nothing around them but the other’s body, their embrace a soft, precious thing. Parting is hard, harder still because the day is passing, and they have to leave the small island. They get dressed back at the meadow, stealing not really furtive glances at each other, like adolescents in love. That’s pretty much what they are, anyway.

That night, Steve falls asleep with the knowledge that, no matter what, Bucky loves him. And that he’ll always have a place here, in his heart as well as in Atlantis.

*

Bucky’s clutching his arm so hard Steve knows it’ll leave bruises, but he can’t seem to really care. His heart is ready to beat out of his chest, hurt spiraling all the way into his guts, standing here, at the mouth of the cave system. Ready to head home.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Bucky whispers, the admission a pain. He needs to close his eyes, to take it in, still gripping Steve hard, trying to prevent him from going back to the surface.

The sounds of Atlantis’ busy life are replaced by a strange buzz in Steve’s ears, his mind blurry, the only thing in focus being Bucky, and, a bit outside of his field of vision, Kida and Milo, leaving after they sent him off. They told him he was welcomed any time he wanted, for how long he wanted, with caring smiles on their faces that didn’t help in alleviating his sorrow.

Stark also came around, though he left minutes ago already, claiming he had a busy day ahead. Steve suspects he was also too ashamed of feeling sad about Steve’s departure to stay and dwell on his feelings. He did, however, leave Steve with an inconspicuous microchip, something he’d apparently be able to plug into his phone, should he ever need to communicate with him. Stark warned him not to use it too much, and definitely not to call Bucky every night. He probably isn’t going to need to, anyway. Before he left the surface, Steve went by Bruce’s lab, asking for another earpiece. The signal might not always be great but… well, it’s something. When he gave it to Bucky, earlier, he choked back on tears, and immediately put it inside his ear, swearing to never take it off. Steve laughed, halfheartedly, the comfort as burning as the pain of leaving.

He sighs, pats Bucky’s hair, and kisses his temple. “I don’t really want to either,” he confesses, feeling ashamed at the very thought.

Bucky snuggles closer to him, enveloping Steve into a warm hug, his next words mumbled into Steve’s shirt. “Then don’t.”

“You know it’s not that simple.” Savoring the touch for as long as he can, he hugs Bucky back.

And then Bucky withdraws, looking at him gravely. “I know.”

A kiss. Another hug. Sweet words exchanged, carving lines through Steve’s heart that he isn’t sure he’ll be able to heal. “We’ll see each other soon,” Bucky whispers, hopeful. “Either I’ll come to you, or you’ll come to me.”

In a jest reminiscent of one of their previous conversations, Steve answers, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Buck.”

Bucky instantly straightens, his face serious. “I’m not.”

Time suspends itself, as if waiting for them to finally part. They’re both undecided. Steve hovers, unsure what to do. Every time Bucky looks at him, pain flashes in his eyes.

Still, Bucky grips his shoulder with one hand, his nape with another. He pulls at Steve until their foreheads touch, their breaths mingling, raising goosebumps on Steve’s arm.

“Mos leyun tay-tem es-e ,” he whispers, eyes half closed, a very small smile curling at the tip of his lips.

Steve chuckles, low. “I don’t know that one, either,” he says. He’d recognized a few words, but the saying… it’s a turn of phrase he isn’t familiar with.

“I’m with you till the end of the line.”

It sounds like a vow. An unbreakable promise. The start of something beautiful, just as much as it is complicated.

His breath catching in his throat, Steve repeats the words, first in English, and then in Atlantean. Bucky laughs at his pronunciation. But in his eyes, there isn’t just hurt flashing anymore. It’s overshadowed by love, something so profound Steve can feel it warming his heart. He hopes they can both keep that promise. He knows they will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Shirin" means "Treasure"
> 
> "Mos leyun tay-tem es-e" is an approximated version of the quote, and literally translates to “When the line (of sight) is over”
> 
> \- 
> 
> Posting smut and feelings on my birthday... I love my life haha.
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them (though keep in mind that some things will surely be revealed in due time).
> 
> Last chapter tomorrow, and then an Epilogue on the day after that! We're close to the end, friends ;)


	12. Till the end of the line

The return to reality is harsh. Harsher, perhaps, than it was the first time. Even though he gets welcomed by a warm embrace from Nat, a snarky comment from Sam, and Bruce’s gentle stoicism, it just… isn’t the same.

Fury puts him on a mission the very next day. Steve has barely found his footing in his apartment again, spending the night turning alone in his cold sheets, bothered by all the city sounds he didn’t ever seem to notice before, when he gets called up, and Maria Hill shows up on his doorstep, urging him to get ready and follow her.

It goes like that for days. Weeks. Sometimes, when he has the evening to himself, he calls Bucky for hours on end, talking about everything and anything with him, falling asleep with his earpiece still full of Bucky’s voice. Other times, when he’s on a mission, he has to unplug it, even leave it back at his house altogether. He hates those days the most.

What he doesn’t hate as much are the meeting events. Oh, he doesn’t like the oppressive feeling of a hoard of people coming specifically to shake hands with him, or have a selfie. Definitely doesn’t like the fact that Fury agreed on Captain America merchandising to be made and sold at those events. But then he’s crouching down at a little girl’s level, her two front teeth gone until they grow back, holding a miniature doll of him, and blabbering with a lisp about how he’s her favorite superhero, and then all the sad feelings wash away. And he hugs the little girl, thanks her dad for bringing her here. The dad is beaming as well, and he thanks Steve at least three times as much, for taking the time to talk and hug his daughter.

It’s the little things.

But then some of the people also make him deeply uncomfortable. He’s used to the blushing teenagers or young – or not so young – adults, flabbergasted in his presence, squealing and apologizing and being, in a weird way, absolutely endearing. What he isn’t used to, and will certainly never get used to, is how people think that the fact he makes himself approachable means they can do whatever they want to him.

Like that one dude groping his ass, and winking at him, as though it’s no big deal. Steve only has to lift a finger, and security is escorting him out. No harm done. Steve does feel kinda soiled, though. It’s not the first time, nor is it the worst time, but it doesn’t make it alright either way.

It’s not just during fan meetings, though. It’s also on missions, sometimes. That one security agent that sees him getting out of the elevator, shield and uniform bloodied, hair a sweaty mess, bones wary, and, after asking if he’s alright, passing it as simple concern, proceeds to sneak into his personal space with a playful smile on her lips, asking if he has anything planned tonight, or the next week, heavily suggesting he could… well, for lack of a better explanation, do her. When she offers her number on a little cardboard note, Steve decides to just keep walking, and ignore her.

“Sometimes, being good looking isn’t easy,” he jokingly complains to Bucky that night, exhausted but knowing he won’t manage to sleep until he’s heard his boyfriend’s voice. _Boyfriend_. He has yet to get used to the term.

He’s trying to play the event as just a quirky anecdote, but he can tell Bucky isn’t falling for it, silent as he is on the other side of the signal. “I wish you could just tell them. Like, just say a straight up “no”, without being labeled an arse by the general public.”

Steve winces. He wishes he could do that, too, but he can’t. “Jealous much?” he teases instead.

A sigh. “A bit. Also, I know it’s wearing you down. Can hear it in your voice.”

 _Touché_. Steve isn’t as subtle as he likes to think he is, apparently. But the conversation does spark an idea, and, tentatively, he speaks it out. “Oooor I could tell them I have a boyfriend. You know, make it official?”

He’s afraid he’s overstepped their boundaries when the other side falls deadly silent, only the familiar sounds of the creatures at Bucky’s place in the background proof that he hasn’t cut off the line. “Does that include telling them he’s from a legendary island buried deep underground or…?” His voice is particularly careful, but Steve can sense the hope in it as well.

“Just because they want to know doesn’t mean I have to tell them anything. I could just say you don’t like appearing in public. That wouldn’t even be a lie.”

Bucky hums. “You could,” he muses, like he’s actually pondering the offer.

“It doesn’t have to be now,” Steve forces himself to say. “Or ever. Just… something to think about.”

“I will.”

Bucky’s reply isn’t a yes. It’s barely even a maybe. Still, it makes Steve happy. He knows it’s not that important anyway, coming out to the public. At least not for him. But he’s been trying to find a way to approach his bisexuality with the papers for a while now, broach the subject to try and further the movement he’s seen growing on social media. He just wants to tell kids that it’s okay, to love who you love. And if Bucky could be by his side when he does it, well… it’s just added benefits.

“I miss you,” he speaks the words into the void of his room, and he hears them echo throughout the receiver, back to Bucky. They’re a bit distorted, like most of their communications, Atlantis getting any signal down there already being a miracle in itself.

“I miss you too.”

Days go on like this. At some point, Steve is in Bruce’s lab, discussing Atlantean technology now that they’ve made sure the place is soundproof. Steve keeps playing with the crystal around his neck, pondering the Atlantean inventions with his friend and colleague, voices gentle. All he can think about is how Bruce would love to work with Shuri and Stark.

Some days he wishes he could merge his two worlds together, align them on the same plane of existence, putting everything he loves in his reach. It’s unfortunate that he can’t.

“Get out of your head, Steve.”

The words draw him back to the present. Bruce hasn’t even moved, isn’t looking at him, still tweaking something on one of his experiments. Steve would think he’d dreamed the soft command if he didn’t know better. He winces. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize. Or at least not to me.”

Pacing the length of the table beside him nervously, Steve shakes his head. “I just don’t know what to do.”

“Well, first, please sit down. You’re making me nervous. We all know what happens when I get too worked up.”

His shoulders drooping, Steve plummets into a seat. Bruce’s lips stretch into a thin smile. He still hasn’t moved his eyes up from what he’s working on.

“Second, ask yourself this question. What do you want?”

Steve’s jitters only increase. This question has been turning in his head for weeks. The answer has always been the same. “I don’t know.”

“But you do,” Bruce insists. “Imagine. If you didn’t owe anything to anyone. No SHIELD to answer to. No pressure from the outside world…”

“You know that’s not possible,” Steve interrupts, only to be immediately shushed by one look in Bruce’s eyes, finally focusing on him.

“ _Imagine_ ,” he says again. “If you had a choice, truly. Yours only, not taking what anyone else might think into account. What would it be?”

That answer is easy. Too easy. That’s probably why he’d kept pushing it down, burying it far into his heart, making sure not to dwell on it for too long. “You know I’d go down there. Not always. I’d come back up here, with Bucky if he wants to. To see you guys, mostly. Maybe take on a few missions. I think he’d like helping, as well.”

He’d given thought to Bucky joining the superhero business with him. Sure, Bucky was primarily a caretaker, but Steve had seen him fight or just use weapons before. He would be good at this. The memories, though, draw his focus on a particular event. On a near death experience. He isn’t sure he’d be able to withstand the stress of knowing Bucky might die at any moment during a mission. That was why the idea had stayed what it was: just a little dream at the back of his mind, without true hold on reality.

“I’m glad you wouldn’t completely abandon us,” Bruce says, his work finally forgotten, looking at Steve head-on from where he’s pushed his hips against a counter, arms crossed. It’s not meant to be a joke. It’s earnest. “But see, you have your answer.”

The protest rises from his lips as an automatism. “I can’t…”

“Why?” Bruce cuts to the chase. Steve wonders if he’s maybe wearing his patience thin. He feels guilty about that, too.

Instead, he shakes his head again, eyebrows drawing together. “The world needs me.”

Bruce hums. Then he turns piercing eyes on Steve, making sure to hold his gaze, cutting every escape from what he’s about to say. “Do they need you, truly? Or do they just need Captain America?”

“What…”

And then the words sink in. Unequivocal.

His chair scrapes against the ground in a deafening sound. He doesn’t even say goodbye to Bruce. He doesn’t seem to mind, smiling to himself a private smile. Steve stumbles out of the lab, and then out of the SHIELD headquarters, and stumbles again until he’s back home, sinking into his bed, eyes wide staring at the ceiling as if it suddenly holds the answers to all his questions.

_Captain America._

The thought swirls in his mind in a never-ending loop. It should be a nightmare. Instead, he feels like those two words hold the meaning to his whole life. If he just searches for long enough. If he can just focus.

When he turns his head, he finds the shield, reflecting the light of the end of the day back at him. Its polished surface is a bit altered here and there by old encounters, but it has lost none of its charm or its magnetism. Steve suddenly feels like he wants to puke. He remembers distinctly the worry spinning in his head when he’d thought he’d lost the shield forever.

And now… now, well, he’s considering the impossible.

He keeps considering it for a while still. He doesn’t talk about it to anyone. Not to Sam. Not to Nat. Definitely not to Bucky. Only Bruce seems to grasp his inner turmoil, sharing both concerned and calm looks with him now and then. Cheering him up just as much as he drives him crazy.

And then one day Bucky tells him about something small. Inconsequential. About how he lost one of the baby creatures that day, not for lack of care, but just because the earth claimed it back to her, like she sometimes does. Steve can hear all the sadness saturating his voice, the vibrato of his words a torture. He feels ready to snap. All he wants, in that moment, is to leave everything behind, and go to Bucky.

So, naturally, the next day, for the planned brunch with Nat and Sam, he stands on Sam’s porch with the shield clutched tight in his hands, nearly shaking with anticipation. Though he’s sure, to the untrained eye, he’d appear just as stoic as ever. That tends to happen often.

As he opens the door, Sam lifts a perplexed eyebrow at him. “Surprise mission?” he asks, already preparing to turn on his feet and suit up as he hails Natasha.

Steve shakes his head, pushes tentatively inside. “No. Something else. I’ll tell you later, let’s eat for now.”

Except he can’t focus on anything else. Not even eating the amazing breakfast Sam has cooked up for them. His eyes keep wandering the space, inevitably falling back onto the shield, and he taps one foot after the other under the table. His friends ignore him, at first, though they do seem to find it weird. And then Nat must get tired of it all, because she levels him with a glare. Steve stops fidgeting at once.

“Out with it.”

It’s not a question. It’s an order.

“I…” But still he can’t reply. It’s like his jaw is stuck, like the words refuse to climb up his throat, no matter how much he wants to say them. Needs to say them. Steve has fought for so long, _craved_ the fight for so long, that abandoning feels like it might kill him.

Nat’s demeanor soothes instantly. She sends him a tiny smile, pats his hand, Sam pushing himself back into his chair, waiting. “Go on,” he says, but this time it’s only a gentle nudge.

That seems to be enough to unravel Steve’s tongue.

“I’m going to retire.”

There. He said it.

Nat and Sam stare at him, eyes huge like saucers. He’s pretty sure that young Steve, the tiny Brooklyn kid that wouldn’t go down from punch after punch after punch would be ashamed right now. Slightly older Steve, with the serum thrumming through his veins and a new shield in his hands, would probably judge him pretty hard. But Steve is tired. He’s fought for too long.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to save people anymore. It’s that he isn’t sure saving them is worth sacrificing himself so fully that he’ll drown in his own head.

Maybe it’s selfish. Actually, he’s sure it is. He craved war for so long he forgot what peace felt like. Until a few months ago.

Now all he wants is to bask in that peace, and never let it go. He just needs to make sure he isn’t abandoning humanity in the process. But he has a plan for that.

“What… what do you mean, retire?” Sam stutters, arms still crossed over his chest, but lowering himself over the table to get a better look at Steve, as if he’s gone mad.

Suddenly much more confident in his decision, Steve cracks a half smile. “From being Captain America.”

Sam splutters. “You can’t retire from being Captain America! Hell, no one can retire from being a superhero! The world needs you!” He rises, and starts pacing the floor of his kitchen, mumbling. From the sidelines, Nat observes the exchange, intrigued, eyes roaming over both Steve and Sam. He has no doubt she’ll have figured everything out in a couple of seconds.

“Actually, I can,” Steve replies, placid. “The world doesn’t need _me_ , specifically. It just needs someone with a shield.”

This seems to only anger Sam more, his eyes flashing in Steve’s direction. “And who do you think that would…”

Before he can finish, Steve takes the shield, and pushes it in the middle of the table. Pushes it toward Sam. “It needs you,” he says, firm and soft at the same time.

Time stops. Steve holds his breath, Sam blinks, and Nat watches, a very small and satisfied smile on her lips. And then Sam stumbles, and the world goes back into motion.

“Me?” he mouths. His eyes are lost, and they fix on Steve, probably trying to find an answer on his face. There’s nothing there that hasn’t just been said. Nothing but the truth. Hesitantly, Sam moves his hand toward the shield, but before he can even touch its surface, he withdraws, looking hurt, mad, hopeful and proud all at the same time.

Nat, finally seeming to grow bored, nudges him with her foot to get his attention. “You’ll make a great Cap,” she says. She means it. And Steve knows she’s right.

“But… that’s… you!” Sam points at Steve, confused and overwhelmed. He isn’t going to settle for a while, Steve knows. Being nominated as the next Captain America is bound to be overwhelming.

Instead of giving him the time he needs, though, Steve launches into the remainder of his explanations. He knows Sam needs to be grounded by something. This should be enough. “Technically, I’ll not be fully retired. I’ll come back up to help from time to time, when you need me.”

“Back up?” Sam repeats, a broken record.

“Sam, dear, you know the only reason Steve is giving away his precious shield is because he’s found something more precious. And you know whatever it… he is isn’t on the surface,” Nat chastises. She’s trying to pass it off as a joke, but Steve knows she’s hurt as well. She won’t forgive him, if he doesn’t come back often enough.

“I’ll only ever be a phone call away.”

Flabbergasted, Sam sits himself back down, jaw hanging, eyes wide. “You’re leaving the shield to me.”

Steve smiles. Takes his friend’s hand from across the table, and pushes it at the shield’s center. Sam’s hand spasms, and then settles, and Steve can feel a weight lifting off his shoulders, soaring up into the sky. Everything is going to be alright. “I’m leaving the world to you.”

With a chuckle, Sam seems to progressively get back to himself. “No pressure,” he mutters. His eyes still haven’t left the shield.

Rising from her chair, Nat comes around the table to hug Sam fiercely. He seems surprised at first, and then quickly soothed, embracing her in turn. Steve is around the table in only a few seconds, joining the hug with such force that he’s shocked not to crack any of their ribs in the process.

“All hail the new Captain America!” Nat exclaims with a delighted laugh, quickly followed by Steve, feeling freer than he has in a long time.

“All hail the new Captain America,” Sam murmurs, hands softly coming to raise the shield, until he’s staring at it straight on. Captain America’s shield. Steve’s shield. His shield.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final real chapter! Only the Epilogue left ;)
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them.
> 
> Join me tomorrow for MORE FEELS!


	13. Epilogue

Two days. Two days he spends excruciatingly hammering out the details of his departure with SHIELD. Two days he lies to Bucky, saying nothing new is happening.

Two days until he plugs Stark’s little microchip into his phone.

The thing buzzes strangely, and someone picks up nearly immediately, voice groggy. “Rogers, that you?” Tony asks, and Steve can’t believe he’s as delighted as he is to hear his voice on the other side. It doesn’t have the same consistency as his exchanges with Bucky, Stark’s voice sounding far too clear, without echoes or breaks, and Steve wonders how he’s managed such a science fit. But that’s not why he’s calling.

“In the flesh,” Steve answers. “Well, technically, in the voice.”

“Arr arr,” Tony ashes out. “I told you only to use this line in case of emergencies, not to tell terrible jokes.” He would probably hang up, Steve figures, if Stark wasn’t filled with an irremediable and insatiable curiosity.

“I need a favor.”

“Of course you do.”

So Steve summarizes what’s been happening on the surface to Stark, as quickly as he can. Sharing his burden, even though it isn’t with Bucky, makes him feel much lighter once he’s done.

“So, what do you need from me exactly?”

“Transport. Something quick, waiting at the Leviathan’s mouth. If I have to spend more than one day in those tunnels, I’m going to go crazy.” Steve can hear Stark open his mouth, probably to retort something witty, or just tell him a plain no. “I know you have the means to make it happen. Bucky told me how he came here last time.”

In truth, he hadn’t detailed the exact journey, but he’d said Stark had helped him, so that ought to mean something.

“I can’t believe you’re calling me on an emergency line, so that I can come and get you so you can surprise your boyfriend more quickly than if you came on foot.”

With a sigh at Stark’s antics, Steve asks, “Will you help me or not?”

“And miss an occasion to see Bucky ridicule himself in front of everybody? Of course I’ll help you.”

Suddenly, Steve isn’t so sure anymore he was right to call Tony at all.

*

Stark does help. In fact, the moment Steve steps out of the water, he’s right there, waiting for him.

Saying goodbye to his friends wasn’t easy. None of them are very… effusive, about their feelings, and yet when it came down to it, with Steve about to embark on the quinjet, he could barely look Nat, Sam and Bruce in the eye, throat closing up around what he wanted to say. Hugs had been exchanged. Promises to visit soon as well. And Steve left the microchip with Nat, telling her quickly what it was. He can’t wait for Tony to get a surprise call from an angry Russian assassin. That’ll teach him.

For now, though, Tony just stands with his hands on his hips, trying to appear annoyed. Steve doesn’t buy it, not even for one moment.

“You’re late,” Stark snaps, furrowing his eyebrows.

Steve shrugs, with a quick look at his watch. “Actually, I’m right on time. But I could turn around and come back in ten minutes if you want?” he suggests, thumb pointing at the little bit of tranquil sea behind him.

“Smartass,” Stark mumbles, shaking his head. He doesn’t wait for Steve, just turns around and goes straight for the swordfish stationed a few feet away.

Even though he kind of wants to drive it – the thrill of controlling a metal machine that goes so fast it makes his head whirl should make him afraid, considering his history, but he finds that the Atlantean’s inventions just reassure him instead – he hops behind Stark without a word. He’s more familiar with the layout of the caverns anyway, he’ll probably get them to Atlantis in no time.

Soaring through cave after cave at high speed doesn’t seem to deter the scientist from asking questions. “What happened to the shield?”

Steve can feel concern in his voice, and he has to stop himself from actually wincing. The shield was made by Tony’s father, of course he’d be weirdly protective of it. So instead of telling him exactly what went down, he settles for a half truth. “It’s in safe hands.”

One of Stark’s eyebrows arcs up as he turns to look at him over his shoulder, a silent _“It better be”_ clear in the expression.

Sceneries zoom past. The high lit up columns Steve and his teams had rested near during their first expedition, strange and gigantic caves filled with an eerie buzz, and miles after miles after miles of just rock. And then the terrain grows familiar. More of the debris of the battle have been cleaned up, but there is still some laying around in what Steve recognizes as the cave where Bucky found them. Thinking back to that time, to the cold press of a blade on his throat and a metallic arm against his skin, steel eyes trained on him, makes him shiver. How things have changed since then.

And they’re out. Atlantis spreads before them after only an hour or so of flight, and Steve feels like he’s suddenly been punched in the gut. He can’t breathe.

Somehow, seeing the beauty of this place, and knowing that maybe, just maybe, he’ll get to stay, to call it _HOME_ , makes him want to tear up. He holds himself back, like he usually does. Instead, he focuses on the details, on making out the familiar visions, sounds and scents.

On a small island, a girl waves at them, her face full of joy. Stark replies with a smile Steve never thought he’d see on his features. Something very fond, full of careful and unbridled love. Like he imagines his mother might have looked at him, back in Brooklyn, when he was still a kid.

Steve waves as well. The girl stares at him, dumbfounded, and then squeals, running back to the house.

“That your kid?” he asks, because he can’t help himself.

Stark is almost shy when he replies, looking down at his hands with a soft blush on his cheeks. “Yes,” he whispers. He’s still smiling.

Steve only notices they’re going down when he glimpses the colorful array of tents they’re nearing. It’s the market. Somehow, he’d expected Stark to take him all the way to Bucky’s lodgings, not drop him here in the middle of the crowd. Steve’s spirit sinks a little.

“Brighten up, blondie,” Stark laughs when he notices. “Your boyfriend is out and about in the market right now, that’s why I’m dropping you here.”

That’s when Steve’s finally seems to fully realize what he’s about to do. The fact sinks in, clawing at his chest, except there is no panic this time. If his heart beats a chaotic rhythm, it’s from excitement only.

He disembarks with a stumble, suddenly feeling like he’s living through an out-of-body experience. His brain is aware of what he’s doing, but it can’t seem to control the movements. He barely remembers to thank Stark – who tells him he now owes him, and also ends up sticking around for what he calls “the show” – before his feet plunge him into the crowd and through the stands.

Half running, he pants his way through the Atlanteans, his eyes tracking every body to find Bucky. Some of the people recognize him, try to greet him, but he doesn’t notice, doesn’t reply. He thinks he hears Stark apologizing on his behalf for his rude behavior. He’d feel sorry, but right now there’s only place for one thought in his mind. One name. Bucky.

He finds him at the meat shop where he’d stumbled upon him all those months back, buying the same piece, going about his routine without a care in the world.

Steve stops in his tracks. The sudden movement and the hushed whispers must attract Bucky’s attention, because then he’s turning his head. The meat falls from his hands.

He gapes, and then he runs, straight into Steve’s arms, half laughing, half sobbing, as Steve catches him and squeezes so hard he nearly cracks his ribs. He’s so shocked, so happy he can’t seem to remember how to breathe anymore. He just keeps holding Bucky. Nearly cries when he understands that he’ll get to do that for many, many years to come.

“What…”

“I’m home.” Steve talks before Bucky can splutter, can ask for explanations, can berate him for not warning that he’d come to Atlantis. He speaks the words, and he knows them to be true. He _is_ home. Here with Bucky in his arms, new friends all around, on an island he didn’t even know existed last year, and yet has offered him much more than the surface since he came back from his trip under the ice.

Bucky withdraws to look Steve in the eyes. His lips wobble. “Home?” he asks. First, confusion. Then, hope. And at last, understanding.

“Home,” Steve confirms.

And then he takes Bucky’s face in his hands, cradles him close, and seals the deal with a powerful kiss.

They promised, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand we're done!
> 
> Thank you everyone for coming on this journey to Atlantis with me (and Steve).   
> This fic was a labor of love but also mostly of friendship, since I couldn't have done it without Nel and Loeily. I can't thank them enough for their passion for this project and the input they gave me, the translations, and the drawings.
> 
> I really hope you enjoyed this, and fell in love with Atlantis just as much as Bucky, Steve and I have ~
> 
> As usual, you can find me on Tumblr [here](http://kiseopingu.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I thrive on comments, so don't hesitate to scream at me about your thoughts and feelings! And if you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them.


End file.
